


Otherworld

by softsylvie



Series: Otherworld [1]
Category: Villainous (Cartoon)
Genre: In this case a genocidal dickwaffle, Probably not gonna be a romance, Reader has a dirty mouth, Reader's gender is unspecified, Reader-Insert, a fictional illness but just in case, all aboard the grim train whoo whoo, biiit of angst here, but fluff and friendship ahoy too knowing me, cw for parallels to serious illness, fun with multiverse bullshit, human extinction scenario, instance of Black Hat being a dickwaffle, this is just a weird plot bunny, will update warnings as needed!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2018-12-23 18:16:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11995308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softsylvie/pseuds/softsylvie
Summary: In all worlds, other places far from this one, the struggle between good and evil can twist up in ways we don't understand.You alone are left in your world to learn this the hard way, months after the first infection.Then when you're snatched from death's doorstep by a being that looks so much like the one who destroyed your world?  That's when things get even MORE confusing.Credit goes to comixgum for the original Heroic AU!





	1. north

_"ARRROOOOOHHHHAAAAAY?"_

The noise arcs over you at first, then it pitches through your skull like a stone through glass walls, shattering as it goes. You can almost feel pieces rattling loose and falling somewhere in the chilly fog. It spirals into silence. You lie flat on your back, barely aware of what the hell is happening or where the pieces are falling off to or why you’re so goddamn cold. But you are, and the cold doesn’t taper off the way it should. No, the cold consumes. It takes. It takes everything you have and screams like a demon in your face that it wants more still. It wants you for every ridge of your spine. It wants you to the edge of your blue lips. It wants you for the deep pit it’s carving inside your chest.

A fresh hole for it to climb in and fuck. 

_Greedy whore._

You want to giggle. 

You cough instead, so hard that you start to retch. It twists what must be glass inside your chest, because it hurts, and it stuns you with how much it hurts. You feel things on your neck come cracking open, spewing fluids. 

Dark fluids.

Contagions.

Breaking, cold silence while your neck drips.

You’re gone as quickly as you came back. To be fair, you’d only come back for the noise. Because, you see, it’s not all that usual a thing for you to hear sounds other than the grunts and squeals made by what you’re hunting. You don’t hunt the things that roar, oh no. You know better than that, you’ve always been smarter than that. However smart you might be – and you must be, to have made it this far – it’s diverging a bit from the point, the point that you have a distant feeling that you should be scared out of your mind, and yet…

Gone, you decide as you feel the world tilt. Your neck oozes like a fat cockroach crushed beneath your old boots. You feel the liquid warmth gushing past the cracked mouths of your blisters. 

It’s safe enough to die. 

You’re gone, you decide.

Might as well.

Lo and behold, your eyes slam shut, and so you are gone.

-

“That should just about handle that…”

You wake to a bright flame running along your arms. You almost buck where you are, still lying flat, vision flying into a cluster of white. 

From within the chill, you can’t bring yourself to wonder how you made it to the far north. There's no way you could have. Where the foothill descended into a brief marsh before you hit the snowy ridges, the river had come under the territorial feud of a few wildcats. Big, ugly creatures with a good sense of direction. Too good a sense, you’d learned that one the hard way. These days, you’re a lot more reserved. Point was, the river had been cut off to you. There was no north, as far as you knew, now. North had been burned away.

_I am awake and lying in the north now this is the north I am in the north –_

“Shh, shhh, now…” 

A tendril of snow clasps at your forehead, pulling you back down with what you know is a mere fleck of its strength. You can’t say how you know this, you just do.

“It’s all right, it’s okay,” a hushed voice whispers to you from the distance that shouldn’t be. It whispers to you from the north. The oracle’s north, the north you’re dying in. 

You writhe. From the rusty confines of your throat, you even manage a whimper. 

“There we go. You’re being so good! You’re being so good, now just be still a bit longer! I’ll get you more medicine, I promise. Now hold still, this might sting...”

When your arms catch fire again, your body forgets being good. Forget good, because good doesn’t stave off the pain sizzling down your arms and around your neck. Good doesn’t stop your every muscle from tightening into the steel knots of a pylon. Good doesn’t stop your spine from bending until you feel like you’ll snap in half.

_Go to hell, north, go to hell, stop it, stop it, stop, stop **stop STOP PLEASE STOP PLEASE…!**_

“I know, I know, shhh,” North continues murmuring to you, while hazy snow fills your vision. “I know. You’re in a lot of pain, I know. But if we don’t get this taken care of, you could…. Well! We’re just not going to think about that, are we?”

Your teeth crack together. From inside the cruel white mouth of the north, your eyes trickle. 

“Shhh…”

At some point, you hush indeed.

You hush for a long while.

-  
_Then the end will come, when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father after He has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power._

_You’d heard that somewhere before, maybe at some point just before the end, but it never mattered. It didn’t matter when you’d thought you were broken, and it didn’t matter when you learned in the dead of the eternal night that there was no such thing as rock bottom.  
_

_Because there is no God and the only He who ever existed to end all of everything bore a black coat, a black stovepipe hat and a shark’s grin._

_One look at him, and you knew a devil._

-  
You wake at one point just long enough to chase that thought with one other:

_Why not? He walks worlds the way Jesus walked on water._

With eyelids heavy as iron, you’re swept right back out again. North isn’t there to murmur you along.

-

“…the potion, I guess. But... still think.... this is just a big waste of resources.”

Another voice joins North’s when you next ease your head up out of the gray sea. The gray sea has become your life. It has become your respite, your home. It's your ditch in the earth while your neck dries out and the pain in your arms dies into a faint, squiggly itch. 

This new voice isn’t anywhere close to gentle as North’s, nowhere near as assuring. It’s low and coarse, almost gravelly. You can’t say you mind it. Even in your current state, you’ve the mind enough to be caught on the surreal fact that you’re hearing another person’s voice at all, after seven long months.

Or at least, you _think_ it’s been that long.

There had been days the calendar didn’t seem to matter, and cussing it at the top of your lungs, you would decide not to leave your little black mark across the date in question. You would be tempted to rip the pages out in as brutal an act as if you were skinning it, only to stop at the last moment. Defiant, but not yet blasphemous. Defiling such an important thing to the old world as time felt… well, it was kind of ridiculous, but it felt like the old world really would be dead.

Time was important. 

A mark of civilization.

“Now, doctor,” North’s voice lilts over the gray waves. “Let’s try to mind our attitude and keep the energy in here positive, hm? If they’re still alive, then it’s certainly not a waste!”

“Whatever. I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t let me collect a few samples of it. If they didn’t survive, they would at least make a fascinating specimen.”

North’s voice is very sharp. “We don’t need samples of it, Doctor Zug.” There follows a beat during which you can practically picture North regaining that composure. He goes on, voice wavering. “Just because we have the cure doesn’t mean you should go risking yourself with all that nasty business. I couldn’t bear to watch you suffer like that, too…!” 

“All right, all right,” Zug grumbles. You can hear the roll of his eyes, the inherent disgust at North’s own infection by sentimentality. “Guess we’ll just keep an eye on ‘em for now.”

“Thank you, doctor.” North sounds quite a bit happier at this. “Oh, you’re simply wonderful, my dear! Don’t you feel a little better to have played your part in all this? To have done your part in preserving life instead of taking it?”

“Eh, not really.”

“Oh, now, I think you do!”

“No. I really don’t.”

As fun as this little trip to the surface has been, you start to drift while Zug and North become an entwined garble. You can pick out some words here and there, but strung together, even you know they make no sense and that you’d be better off in the dark where things are much simpler.

So off you go.

No invitation needed.

-

_They bring the bodies out at the end of the driveways every morning, at around eight o’clock._

_Some of them are sprawled out on blue tarp, their faces cold and pale as chalk with eyes too swollen to stay shut. Their tongues loll out past their lips, black as death by hanging. They typically get complaints from the other neighbors if they’re not covered up; they say you can smell the grungy brown piss that pools around their legs from ten yards._

_Others are dragged out swaddled in shower curtains, others in trash bags, for Christ’s sake. It’s usually one or two people per house serving as the friendly neighborhood undertakers. The rest of the families stay back, watching through the torn blinds and slatted shutters. You never really see any of them broken down in tears._

_Your house has been empty for some time._

_Every morning, when the clock tower makes its eighth chime, you watch your neighbors bring out the dead._

_The living don’t cry. Near the beginning they most certainly had, when there were tears and thoughts enough to be spared. Nowadays, they’re relieved to be one body less._

_More food to go around, more water._

_Some families dream happily of extra rations. It’s the best they can hope for._

_A man named Big Ray, who volunteered for the job, drives past in a large blue plated garbage truck that a few years back he’d never imagined himself owning. He’d been a lawyer once, if you can buy that._

_They burn the bodies in the ditches to the south._

_This was only the first wave._

-

You open your eyes, expecting the chime of the town clock. 

It doesn’t come. 

It would have never come again anyway, because you’d left the town a long while back when there were no bodies to be brought out. Big Ray and the estranged city truck had vanished like old friends from childhood to be burned in the south. There had been no food, no water you trusted. You’d slung up a pack full of old clothes and left. The sickening, semisweet stench of meat and death rose like wood smoke in the mid-spring heat as you set off for the north.

Traffic along the interstate hadn’t been so bad. Everyone being dead had a way of easing congestion.

_Why the hell would the clock chime?_

You close your eyes and try not to think about it. It all fades into another dumb dream, one of many that come and go with no rhyme or reason.

When you next dare to look, you find yourself swiveling your head side to side. The first thing you notice is that you’re in a bed, which already derails this whole thing dangerously into dream territory. You had a bed of your own, yes, but it was nowhere near this soft and the sheets were a dusty cream color, not pale blue. Your room was also kept clean, but not meticulous. That's the only word with which you can describe every polished and vacuumed surface in this place, from the mahogany bedside table to the plush white carpet. Even the wallpaper has a fresh look to it. Perfect, pristine, patterned along the edges with Victorian turquoise roses.

Yeah, okay, _definitely_ not your place.

Even in a world where everything was free, no way in hell could you squat in something this nice.

Across from you, a golden handle in the white panel door turns with a click. 

You search the table, the carpet, all around for any sign of your weapons. A pair of knives you’d kept close, a pistol you’d kept closer, all filched from a sporting goods store in some town back in Who Gives a Shit. 

They’re gone.

_Damn…!_

As the door opens, it permits a demon that you start cussing at the top of your lungs. 

-

“Good morning.” He tries to sound so cheerful about it that it turns your gut inside out. “Or good evening, rather. It’s about seven o’clock, you slept an awful long time–”

“ _Fuck you! Fuck you!!_ ” You’re on your feet, scrambling backward. Your body aches in protest, dragging like a sledge weight. You can’t say you care. “Get the fuck away from me!”

That _demon_ holds up a placating hand. White gloves, perfect and clean. “Now please, let’s just calm down…!” The visible right eye, the one that doesn’t hide behind a monocle flashes with what you could swear to be concern. “Calm down, no one’s going to hurt you…!”

“ _FUCK!! YOU!! DON’T COME NEAR ME! I’LL KILL YOU!! I’LL KILL YOU!! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!! DON’T COME ANY CLOSER!! I’LL KILL YOU!! DO YOU HEAR ME?!_ ”

You rage on against the fire in your throat. Your heart slams in your own ears as you veer off from zero to sixty in about five seconds flat.

Because he dares, he actually _dares_ to assume that you’re _**this stupid.**_

Sure, just trade the black in for white and switch the monocle around to the other eye, voila, presto change-o, _this stupid little shit will never figure it out._

He isn’t listening, of course. He races across the room to your bedside, still flashing that fake concern as he tries to talk over you. “Settle down, now, just settle down! Please! This isn’t helping you, you haven’t fully recuperated–!”

You lunge and swing a fist at him. Far from your best right hook. Most your strength’s fallen to the shallows, since that second or third day with the fever. It turns out not to matter. Your fist catches in what feels like molasses, until you look and see nothing but the faint shimmer of gold and blue light rising off of him like a heat mirage. All at once, your hand’s released as if it had only been striking an air pocket. 

A shield?

“Now, please stop! Please…!” He holds up both hands. “Save your strength! This can’t possibly be good for your condition, let’s calm down and discuss this –”

“Got a problem in there?” The hard voice of the doctor – you forget his name – calls from beyond the slightly open door. “Just say the word and I’ll come in and fire! I’ve been wanting to test this new dart gun on something!”

The dirty son of a bitch turns his head. “Unnecessary, Doctor Zug!”

You take that chance for another swing at him, though you meet the same futile result of your fist being thrust back at you. Looks like he doesn’t need to be paying attention for that shield to save him. 

Well hell, how are you gonna do this, then?

Never mind, you don’t care. 

You don’t care what it takes, you don’t care about the odds. You want to try to send this filthy, slimy bastard back to whatever maggoty hole in Hell he came crawling out of. You want to try to gouge his eyes out with your thumbs, drive your fingers in until those eyes run like soupy jello out of the sockets. The hate that boils inside your chest is the sort that rapes a human soul, the sort that sane people don’t bother with, except you can’t say whether or not you’re sane anymore.

A week or so back, you had taken a long, hard look in the bathroom mirror. The house you’d been squatting in was a fairly all right one, its former owners long dead and cremated in the fire pit out back. Yeah, the end of the world had found you doing some pretty messed up shit, but it was the end of everything and when the game’s already lost, anything goes.

That's not the point.

The point is that a few days after that, after you’d sent your silent apology because at least you’re not _that_ fucked up, you’d felt the first chills. You’d written it off. You insisted that you’d imagined it, you were fine because you weren’t sick _before_ this place and you wouldn’t be after. You somehow hadn’t caught it. You’d been immune. No catching you, no sir. 

A day later found you staring at the fresh blisters on your neck in the bathroom mirror. 

You had held the counter for balance, cold and sweating. The thermometer gave you every bit the prognosis you needed to stop dancing around it. 

Immune? Special?

Nope.

You were going to die. 

The prognosis had hung silently between you and your reflection, as you looked on dazedly into the glass as if someone had clubbed you. A demon who had gone shrieking with wild laughter from this world, a demon who had called himself Black Hat had kept his promise to humanity.

Back then, you had simply resigned and the fight had gone out of you. There were no reasons to try anymore.

Until _now._

Now the fight is back in you, back in you and _roaring_. The utter fury possesses you as if you’ve a demon of your own on your side. 

You take another swing at him, followed by another, and then another.

He still pleads with you in spite of everything. “Please stop…! I might have to restrain you if this goes on, you have to try to understand! If you go on like this, you might even…!” 

A spike of molten sludge sloshing in your stomach has you folding before he can finish. You clutch onto the white and gold bedpost. The floor dips beneath your feet and the world plunges back into the black waves for a split second. When you bob back up into semi consciousness, so does the sludge as it wrings your gut like a scummy barroom rag.

“Oh, goodness…” With a twirl of his finger, he’s produced a glowing white ring that pops like a hat into a small trashcan. He bends towards you, frowning. “Are you going to…?”

You don’t waste much time ralphing right into the little bucket. You don’t have much to lose. It’s mostly rancid water that splashes in, but it feels like you’re hawking up piano wire just the same as you heave with enough force to leave you shaking.

“Shhh… it’s okay…” North’s old murmuring falls over you as you puke up the last of your vigor. “It’s all right. It’s okay, you’re almost done…”

 _Screw that,_ it feels like it’s _never_ going to end. You heave, and then with trembling hands you silently beg your body to just stop, stop forcing you through this, stop killing you, please stop, _stop,_ and then you heave again. 

He pats your back sympathetically.

You’re convinced this is going to kill you. You exist for a while only near the back of your mind, riding the waves while you burn alive.

Eventually though, it grinds to a halt. This too does pass, and you’re left a shivering wreck on the carpet while you hang onto that trashcan with a white knuckled grip.

North kneels right beside you, a hand on your shoulder. “Feel better?” he asks softly. 

No. No you really don’t.

“I should apologize,” he continues, while you stare ahead. “I… somewhat anticipated this reaction. I should have waited, waited until you had more of your strength back before I tried to explain.”

Your resolve buckles with a rattling cough. 

He stands for a second, only to bring down a pillow from the bed and ease it towards you. It takes one final spurt of sheer will, and the pain in your neck leaves your eyes tearing, but you lay your head down to rest. At this point, you have no pride to salvage. 

You’ll take any comfort, any at all. 

“I think that reaction tells me who was responsible for what happened to your world,” North says. He eases himself to sit down beside you, though he retains a careful distance. “Black Hat. I suppose that name means something to you.”

You keep staring straight ahead, an animal put down by its own rabid hate.

“The mix-up. It tends to happen, here and there. Not all that often, mind you, but the multiverse is a wondrous place, wrought with possibility! Growing all the time, new worlds coming as old ones go, and well, not _every_ single one has heard of both of us. It’s not _so_ absurd, when you think about it.” He pauses, hiking a thumb up to the flawless white brim of his top hat, his expression thoughtful. “So sometimes it happens. There’s some world or other that’s only had the pleasure of meeting one of us… if a pleasure is what you’d _call_ meeting Black Hat, anyway.”

You find strength enough to narrow your eyes. 

“I know, I know, one of the biggest clichés in just about any world, isn’t it?” North looks down at you with a sad, ironic smile. “The whole, ‘my evil twin did it’, bit. I’ve seen enough of your television shows and Hollywood movies to know how it sounds. But unfortunately, we’re not going to be getting points for originality on this one.”

You swallow against the furnace blazing in your throat. “What the hell are you talking about?” you manage to croak.

“Language aside… I would like to introduce myself proper.” North’s smile grows, and by this point, not even you can deny that there’s something warm and tender to his demeanor. It comes in the same blink of logic that told you that you were going to die, there’s something… oddly genuine about it. “My name is White Hat. And you’ve been here at my manor for about two days, more or less. Now, what’s _your_ name?”


	2. ugly miracles

When you next look in the mirror, you almost reel in terror.

A pair of sunken eyes stares back at you, encroached by circles on pale skin. You’d gotten quite thin over the summer, moving as you were, but the virus had practically gnawed the meat off your bones along with your natural color. Your hair, a dry and thin shock hanging in your forehead, looks apt to start falling out. Around your neck, the blisters have at last flattened into pockets of dead flesh. No longer swollen with disease, though no doubt lingers in your mind that they’ll be scars.

Not that you’re complaining. Most people with the virus either rotted to dust or were burned to ashes. You can think of plenty worse, considering you shouldn’t be alive right now.

You stand there with your feet rooted for a while, and in your mind, you imagine the eighth chime and picture your body sprawled on the tarp. Good for the fires. You imagine going up in Big Ray’s truck, vanishing to the south end of town, never to come back.

Ugly as it is, you decide, you’re looking at a miracle in that round bathroom mirror. It’s the world’s ugliest miracle, but you can’t remember having read anywhere that all such things are beautiful.

Sighing, you draw back from the glass and gaze at the tub. 

Clean clothes had been left on the marbled white counter for you. White Hat, as your host calls himself, had taken the liberty of ordering them. A generic gray T-shirt and black athletic shorts.

“I’d like you to try a nice cool bath,” White Hat had said. “You’ve still got a fever, so we’ll concentrate on that, first. I’ve left you some clean clothes on the counter, as well as the necessary toiletries you’ll be needing for your stay here. I can explain everything a little later, all right? Please don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it.”

The first trace of humanity you’d seen in months, and it came from _his_ spitting image. 

Figures.

 _Because it just wouldn’t be the same if life_ didn’t _find some way to fuck me in the mouth._

You press it from your mind.

It’s one of those large antique tubs, a porcelain basin on curvy brass legs, sporting a turquoise curtain… with smiling rubber duckies on it. 

You’re not sure whether or not to laugh. The fact that it’s the first time in weeks you’d felt the urge kind of kills the moment for you.

The water sloshes in, and looking along a thin wire rack, you see all sorts of body washes. Lavender. Tea rose. Willow. At least their owners aren’t dead. That’s one thing that’s always bothered you about using the beds, furnishings and belongings of the houses you squatted from township to township: the glaring fact that you weren’t being stopped or even objected to, because anyone that could object was gone.

_Sorry you’re dead, but hey, I wanna smell like a garden, so what’re we gonna do about this?_

Not funny, but the dark vestiges of your humor were the only company you had.

You strip off your sweaty, greasy clothes and slide into the cool water. It’s freezing, you’re freezing cold as you plunge in, but you already know hot water will be of no help to you here. Cold water is almost all that’s left in the world behind you, anyway. You’ve done cold water plenty of times before, you can do cold water here.

-

_They started executing the sick in the southern reaches of Painter’s Rock, Tennessee._

_Small blocks of the infected were brought out, tethered in cable seals and handcuffs and whatever else they’d filched from the police station. Shoved down to their knees, shots through the head. The gunmen wore all black with dark goggles, and you never suspected once that it was all precaution._

_Everyone wore gloves. Everyone wore masks. Everyone wore safety glasses and entire parts of town were sanctioned off into districts, between the sick and the healthy and the ‘risk pool', the ones who handled the infected. The barest remnants of the law remained. A retail store manager named Curtis took up the reins as the local sheriff that enforced those remnants. He had a shotgun and friends who stood behind him, so, not too many objected._

_Shotguns made for one hell of an argument._

_You’d packed what you needed and hauled ass before making any potential friends._

-

Collapsing back on the bed, because what else can you even do, what else do you even have the strength for, you stare up into the vaulted lengths of the smooth white ceiling and… well, you marvel.

Not so much at the bath and the scrubbing you’d given your teeth, after throwing up. You’d been managing that well enough on your own even before you’d found yourself here. 

The marvel lies in the fact that you’re alive, for a start, and the fact that you apparently weren’t a lone ranger waiting to die in the universe, for another. Well, never mind, you hadn’t been a lone ranger on that one. More like a lone piss ant, one that a mean spirited god was watching while holding a nasty magnifying glass. He’d likely sat down with a bowl of popcorn after releasing that first vial, those first few drops of a virus they hadn’t been able to pin down. He’d released those first few drops of Whatever the Fuck, and he’d let public panic and death do the rest.

 _Its mutation patterns are rapid-fire,_ the CDC had been quoted to saying. _We’ve literally never seen anything like it. One week it behaves and transmits like rabies, one week it behaves like something else entirely._

Unimpressed with conventional human science, the virus had wiped them out. Guess the jury had stayed out too long on that one.

You know all of this, and it had taken you weeks to convince yourself it wasn’t a dream.

Same way that struggle’s risen again now, where you lie in your new bed with no choice but to accept help from his mirror image. You tell yourself your name, your age, where you were when you’d heard of the first infection. Patient Zero had been a no-name you’d forgotten in five seconds, going on about your day. An interesting Facebook post, if even morbidly so, but nothing you couldn’t shrug off. You tell yourself what you did in your old life, before no-name Patient Zero had stumbled out of quarantine and doomed an entire hospital.

_This is not a dream._

Your hands trail up to your forehead, as if to try easing the reality in.

_You’re alive._

_Possibly one of the only ones alive?_

You’re about to shut that out, wall it away in your own personal cellar and will yourself to sleep. You’re about to dive back into the sea of black and let that be that, when you hear a brisk knock on the door across the room.

“Hello?” North – White Hat, you correct yourself – drawls, calling your name politely from the other side. “Are you dressed? May I come in?”

“Yeah,” you manage, your voice all cracking grit. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

He walks in, a small white tray in his hands that sports a bowl of soup you smell before he’s a pace forward. Your stomach wakes, though it feels torn between snarling and withering. You’ve been tormented by hunger, you should eat, you know. You need to, but at the same time…

White Hat gives you another one of his sad smiles. The image is still so wrong that your mind struggles to move beyond it. “We can’t have you eating richer food just yet,” White Hat explains as he lays the tray on one side of the bed and sits on your mattress. “You could end up getting ill again. You do need to eat, though, dear. So let’s see if we can’t get some soup in you.”

You look at the soup and the mug of steaming tea next to it suspiciously. Instinct almost drives you back against the headboard as you sit up.

“Here, let me just set this up for you…” Utilizing the extra space you’ve availed him, White Hat lays the tray flat across the bed and eases it towards you. For god’s sake, the mug has daisies painted on it. And this is coming from someone who looks _so_ exactly like that asshole. “Try a couple spoonfuls and see what you think, hm? It’s Lumencia’s recipe, full of fresh vegetables right out of the garden!”

There’s a cobweb tangling in your head as you try to decide what to do. If this White Hat did save you, what choice do you have but to trust what he offers? If it’s Black Hat in disguise after all, then what choice do you have but to play the game until the end? The game’s lost already. 

If it _is_ the bastard toying with you, you can’t help being tempted by that bowl of soup if only to throw it hot and steaming right into his face.

_But... it’s not._

Some part of you, you can’t name what – hope? Naivety? Desperation? – niggles like a parasite in the back of your head. Something about the depth you can make out in that visible eye, something about his voice, something, that ever elusive something…

_I don’t know._

White Hat is watching you, gauging your silence. “I can only imagine what would be running through my mind if I were in your situation,” he says. “Believe me, I understand why you’re wary and I’m not at all offended.”

You sit and wait, watching him right back.

“But I can only promise you that you’re safe, here,” White Hat continues, nudging the soup towards you with a hand. “I promise, no one is here to hurt you. If you’d like, I can try to explain what’s going on while you eat. Would that be a good compromise?”

He looks at you so… hopefully. 

Screw it.

Not like you’ll gain much by scorning his hospitality. If he decides to take it away, you’ll only regret it once he’s gone.

Slowly, you ease up to the tray and take a small spoonful of soup. Chicken and vegetable, and as you ease it into your mouth, you find that it’s not salty to all hell and back like the canned stuff you’ve been living off of. You can’t help gulping up the next few spoonfuls. 

White Hat beams his approval. “Good. Now, take it easy,” he says. “Keep it slow. You want to try keeping this down, after all.”

Tempted as you are to pour the entire bowl down your throat, you know he’s right. You set aside the spoon and go for the tea to temper your pace.

Nodding, he draws a somber breath. “Right. I think now I owe you a bit of an explanation, hm?”

You quirk a brow over your tea. “It’d be nice. No offense,” you tack on somewhat lamely, trying to be tasteful. Trust issues or not, here, he did save you. 

“Well…” White Hat stares across the carpet of your room for a few seconds. “Just what do you know about your world, do you think?” he finally asks. 

“That it’s gone to hell,” you reply, not missing a beat. “And that’s not really a matter of opinion.” 

He chuckles. “That’s not quite what I meant,” he says. “Though I… could have worded that better, I suppose. Let me ask another way, then. Do you believe that your world, your Earth, is the only one out there?”

You pause, unsure of how to even absorb that question, let alone answer it. For months now, you’ve been focused and driven only on moving. Survival. The game had been lost, and so it came down to hanging on as you weaved between cars with long dead engines and through the ruins of cities taken by riots. It had been about climbing in through the shattered storefronts and seeing what was left for you to pick up before moving on. No permanence. No second thoughts about what you were doing, let alone abstract beliefs that had been dragged out on the blue tarp with –

No.

_We don’t think about that._

God and heaven and hell had burned in the ditches to the south. All that was there was moving on.

“I never really thought about it,” you answer. “I mean…” 

_Does he really think I had time or even the will to get **philosophical,** for god’s sake?_

White Hat frowns. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about everything that’s happened, about your loss. I can only imagine what you’re feeling right now.”

You stare down into your tea. What are you supposed to say? That it’s fine?

“But that’s one part of my job, however grim it may be,” White Hat continues. “I go about the other worlds every now and then, traversing to…save what I can, and salvage what I can. I can only be in so many places at once, I’m afraid, but at the very least that scoundrel is limited in the exact same ways I am.”

All right, so this explanation isn’t clearing up much for you so far, but at least you don’t need an explanation there to know who he means. “Black Hat,” you supply.

“The one and the same,” White Hat says, an elegant brow scrunching over his monocle. You don’t miss that subtle bite to his tone. “I would love nothing more, _nothing more_ than to have the multiverse at peace and safe at last. But until then, I suppose we’re settled into our lots, Black Hat and I.”

“What do you…?”

“I don’t suppose you’ll find it too crazy to hear that… that your world, your Earth, isn’t the only Earth out there?” White Hat turns to you, still with that rueful smile. “Tell me, have you ever heard of such a concept? That there are other worlds out there, other worlds, other universes than the one you’ve known?”

“Universes – hang on, you mean like string theory?” you ask, your grip tightening a little around your mug. You knew as much about that and metaphysical science as anyone with an internet connection and time to kill, you supposed. You knew about it, but you were no expert.

But the other being is brightening, grinning to flash you perfect white teeth. “Why, yes! It’s something like that! Oh, good, this might actually be a bit easier to explain than I thought!” He grins wider. “Ah, not every Earth has come so far along in their scientific developments, see. In fact, you might be a bit surprised to see how some Earths diverge quite a bit from one another all because of a few choices!”

He starts to ramble on a bit about that, about how some Earths out there hadn’t yet discovered electricity, others were unified and running on one language (French, because sure why not), and yet other Earths were running on this and other Earths were running on that… 

You’re not sure if you’re interested in hearing that, though. Because right now, you’re kind of… letting this hit you. You sit there, thunderstruck, while the reality sinks in and yet sighs through you like wind through the chimes. Because bullshit, your mind initially responds, a kneejerk reaction. Bullshit that any of that stuff is real, bullshit that this isn’t a dream, that any of this makes any sense…

…But then, looking back at your world, you can’t help thinking that _that_ hadn’t seemed real, either. 

It had been something straight out of a comic book, or another crappy superhero flick to fill out the summer block. You remembered seeing him in a black leather chair, in some dark room somewhere, seated with all the regal composure of a king. He grinned at your world through televisions, jumbo-trons and monitors strewn all around the world. A very deliberate transmission, free of charge. It was a few days after Patient Zero. 

_“Greetings, world! For those of you new to the game, well, it’s going to be a bit too late to catch up by the time I’m done with you.”_

_His mouth twisted into a hideous grin, baring lines of teal teeth._

_“_ Any _who, I am Black Hat! And I’m here to ask you all a question pertinent to a little curiosity on my end. Now,_ just _humor me on this and follow as best you can.”_

_He snapped his fingers, and with a quivering of black smoke, a little hexagon of dark glass appeared. He rolled it lazily over his knuckles, twirling it with the dexterity of a stage magician._

_“If, hypothetically, someone were to break a few of these little beauties into the water supply, or feed them to a couple of rats – or children, I forget which – then… exactly when would you lot start regretting your entire existence? Are you curious about that? I know I am! Let’s find out!”_

_The transmission shuddered in a flurry of static. Flames danced behind him while demons shined beneath that monocle, his grin lewd while green saliva hung in ropy strands off his chin. He was every bit the lunacy that drove the worst in every killer. He was the shadow in every back alley that hid bodies. He was the cold wind that swept sanity clean from a mind like filth from a gutter, and he was the final slam of every trembling stone door. People swore up and down that they saw a skull in that monocle, bobbing it would in muddied swamp water._

_He crushed the little hexagon with a flex of his grip._

_“Show your work, everyone!” he quipped cheerfully as something wormy dribbled out between his fingers. “Eyes on your own paper, all that nonsense. Oh, but don’t any of you worry. Someday, I’ll look back on this and laugh! A lot!”_

The video had gone viral. One of the last of the internet’s smashes before the first wave broke out.

“…for you?”

_For me, what?_

You realize that White Hat has been rambling on a bit while you’d been thinking, and you’d kind of conked out. “U-uh… sorry, what?” you ask.

White Hat looks a little embarrassed. “I asked if I was going a bit too quickly for you,” he says. “You looked a little lost for a second, dear.”

Yes. Yes, this is too quick for you. It’s breakneck, the speed of fifteen car pileups, and here you are reeling from the fact that you’d been on a dying world and somehow survived.

“N-no.” You shake your head anyway. “No, I… I think I get it…”

“Hm.” He’s likely done this before, given this explanation to people, though how many times is anyone’s guess. “Well… that being said, the multiverse is unfortunately not peaceful, as you may have guessed. There are forces at work that keep some worlds at war, that keep others hungry, that tear entire civilizations apart, the same as there are forces that keep worlds together and try to hold back the darkness.”

“God and the devil?” you ask, your tone a little disbelieving.

“I suppose it’s something like that. Black Hat and I, our ongoing clashes are just one battle among many. You have those who stand for the order, those who stand for the chaos. You have your Black Hats, your Randall Flaggs, your Draculas. They win or lose in their battles against their White Hats, their Roland Deschains, their Van Helsings. Whatever there may be above, there is such below. It’s one constant of every universe.” White Hat's look becomes rather serious. “And sometimes, the battleground can go to either side. It’s… an unfortunate fact of life. Sometimes he’ll win, and sometimes I’ll win.” 

This time, White Hat can scratch this up to a loss.

He looks at you with that shadow of pain in his eyes again. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “If I’d… if I had known. If I had only known he was there, if I could have been there… It’s no good for me to say that, now. All I can say is… I’m sorry. I’m sorry it ended this way, I’m sorry that we have to speak like this, I’m so sorry…” 

Your throat tightens. You stare into your tea, eyes burning against a surge of tears before you can stop them. 

"It’s supposed to be my responsibility. It’s my purpose, my errand, to use what I have as I can. To hold back the darkness. That’s the burden we all share, the burden I try to ease, but this time...”

You can’t say anything. If you even try, you know you’ll have to fight the urge to scream. So you draw a shaky breath, rubbing at your eyes.

_I’m sorry it ended this way._

_Everyone is **dead.**_

“Am…” You struggle against what feels like your windpipe twisting. You take a second to blink back tears and start again. “Am I… the only…?”

White Hat doesn’t answer, and it’s all the answer you need.

You feel a jagged pain come rolling down like an avalanche in your chest. A consuming thing that will bury you before the day is out, whispering while it kills. It runs wide and deep. The sharp, downward spin of its embrace is perversely welcome. 

Because it’s _something. You have no place to be, no town to flee to. No houses to hunt, no food to catch. No stores to pick out. You’ve gone still at last, you can breathe a sigh and actually _feel_ something, for a change. You feel a grief so profound that you can’t fight it. There is no rational answer to it. _

__

__

Instead, you curl your chin towards your chest, allowing your stare to bore holes into the carpet.

White Hat doesn’t say a word. He only moves closer until he deems it safe enough to sit beside you. You can hear the mattress groaning a bit as he goes. You feel the soft touch of gloves on your arm.

There’s no telling how long you remain like that, before you're eventually wracked by sobs that shake your entire body. Looking back, you can’t really remember the last time you took to… feel, or think, much deeper beyond your new survival instincts. Crying and sulking meant _dying_ in the world Black Hat created. You saw what happened to people who gave in. You saw, and for some reason, you'd decided that you wanted to live.

“I’m sorry,” White Hat murmurs to you, and you can hear his voice is constricted. He’s fighting back tears of his own. “I’m sorry. I'm so sorry, I'm sorry...” 

No reply. Only pain, only grief. Not the black waves that have been saving you, only clear waters. Now you can see reality for what it is.

“We’ll do whatever we can for you,” White Hat keeps on. “I know that doesn’t mean much now, but I can promise you, we’ll do everything we can.”

You still can’t speak, and you can’t for however long it takes for you to calm. By the time the worst of it all has passed, you’re spent. Your throat burns and thickens like melting tarmac. Your eyes trickle. You wonder if it’s possible to kill yourself this way. 

“Here…” White Hat is urging your hands up, making you realize that you’ve been holding onto the mug with a death grip almost this entire time. “Drink. Take a sip, it might help.”

“Stop, just stop, _stop!_ ” You almost throw the mug down to the carpet; your hands shake as if leaping on the notion. “It won’t help, it _won’t!_ I don’t want any goddamn _tea!_ I want…!” Your voice betrays you as it cracks, but you know what, it doesn’t matter.

Because everything you could want right now is dead. Not even one left. The thought scars as it furrows like a rusty nail through your brain. 

_Not even one._

“Yes, I know that,” White Hat murmurs, and you can feel him leaning in close. “Please, look at me.” 

When you look up, you see the world weariness of long roads and burning suns and lonely moons in White Hat’s gaze. You see a veteran’s guilt and know that your world isn’t the only one he’s lost. You see the things that you’ve glanced in mirrors, and it’s then and there you see what your instinct has been harping on, when it was telling you that this being isn’t anything like Black Hat. 

You see feeling. You see an impeccable sense of order, a deep kindness that twists your soul. 

A _conscience._

“I’m sorry, and I _hate_ that that’s all I have to offer. There’s nothing I can say to make _any_ of this right,” White Hat says, very plainly and with no small amount of agony. “When there are losses like these, when there are such… _fatalities,_ nothing can be done for it. For all of my abilities, my dear, I can’t change the past. If I could, you can be most certain that I would.”

He rests a hand on top of yours, and you have no choice but to believe him.

“Why not,” you hear your voice creak like an ancient hinge. “You walk worlds. You do all this, I don’t even know what you are, and everything’s a mess, everything’s messed up, everything’s so goddamn messed up, I don’t…! You can't bring them back, you can't...?” 

“I’m afraid I have my limits just the same as Black Hat has his. As for what we are, well… I think that’s an explanation better left to another day, hm? Right now, I would like to concentrate on _you._ ”

“What’s going to happen?”

“That’ll be entirely your decision,” White Hat says. “When the time comes, I’ll be more than happy to present you with options. But in the meantime, you need to focus on getting better. Yes, your body may be absorbing that nasty virus now, but… well, you're still not in the best shape. So first thing’s first, I would like to see you rest and recover here.”

“And then what?” you press stubbornly.

But White Hat is shaking his head, availing you no chance to keep pushing the subject. He urges the mug up to you again. “Not right now,” he says. “We’re not going to worry about any of that tonight, okay? Let’s concentrate on the present.”

You want to protest, but it dies within you. Slumping in defeat, you drink your tea and taste a faint hint of apple, lemon, and cinnamon bark. White Hat nudges the soup back to you, imploring you to finish. He won’t leave until you’re done, that much you figure out early on and because you don’t want to fight anymore, you can’t fight, so you start in again.

The next gulp of soup goes down like a mouthful of ashes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeeeeeah bit of grimdark here because this is not the happiest scenario i've ever written - thanks black hat for being a douche 
> 
> but i'll try to make things a bit lighter in these next few chapters! :U


	3. acclimate

Eventually, you sleep.

After White Hat has gathered up the dishes, after he’s bid you a good night and pleasant dreams, you fall back as if your bones are carved from lead. You didn’t think you’d be able to sleep, not with so much rammed into your head now, but you turn out to be dead wrong. You’re gone mere seconds after White Hat turns out the light behind him.

Long, soundly into the night, you sleep with hardly any dreams. There are echoes here and there, echoes that belong to things that shamble at you from the ends of long tunnels, but you drift along without touching the ground. You feel nothing.

When you wake up, you can see the dull gray of a new morning in the blinds to your left. You hear the low, bouncy song of whippoorwills, and then something else, something you thought you’d be damned to ever hear again in this lifetime: the hum of a car. 

Baffled, you push yourself up and stumble to the window, parting the blinds. You watch a small gray sedan roll by. It’s gone in a blink of its turn signal on a small four-way intersection just down the street. A white pick-up follows after.

Actual cars.

_Holy hell._

The thought seems so ridiculous at first, but then, cars had gradually eroded out of existence for you over the longest summer of your life. Engines idled out. Batteries died. The vehicles became lifeless metal hulks in still lines, no more than oversized toys at that point. You’d pondered trying your hand at maybe fixing one up, but that thought was scratched off pretty quickly. You wouldn’t get far going bumper to bumper with people who had died trying to evacuate, and well, where were you going in such a rush, anyway?

“ _Breakfaaaast!_ ”

You don’t get much time to reminisce as you turn at a young woman’s voice. The white panel door slams open. Standing in the doorway is indeed a young woman, and everything about her does indeed suggest young, if not a bit eccentric mixed in for spice. She’s dressed to some odd nines; a gold denim vest over a dark blue V-neck and a ruffled blue skirt, mixed with the symmetry of a striped blue and gold sleeve and legging down her left side. The most notable thing for you, though, is the fluffy cap sitting atop a haystack of bright magenta hair. A griffin, crocheted most likely, bright gold with glassy blue eyes.

She grins wide at you as she comes bounding in, _somehow_ keeping another tray’s worth of food balanced in one hand. 

You’d be damned if you could say how she was managing. 

“So _you’re_ the new one,” the young woman chirps. “I wanted to get to see you, but White Hat and Zug-bug kept saying no. Sometimes they’re not much fun, it’s like, _mellow ouuuut,_ y’know? You were probably sitting there in bed just being _bored_ the whole time!”

You can only stare as she goes about fixing up your breakfast on your bedside table. Nothing extravagant. A bowl of oatmeal with some blueberries, a little tea plate with sliced up fruit, a glass of orange juice. Apparently you still aren’t ready for richer food.

“I hope you’re starting to feel better,” the young woman continues chattering on a mile a minute. “’Cause if you are, then we could totally go out and do some stuff in town! I mean White Hat miiiight say no, but I don’t think _one_ trip would hurt anything!”

“Um…”

“They just finished building a new movie theater! We could go see that new romantic comedy! It’s got… that guy, and what’s-her-face!”

You shuffle a little. Stupid as it might be, you can feel your heartbeat picking up a little. Turns out months of isolation have left you a bit out of practice with basic human interaction.

Who knew, right?

“Huh? Oh! Ha, duuuuh!” The young woman knocks herself upside the head. “You’re probably all, ‘uhhhh, who is this chick and what is she doing’ right?” She chuckles, pleased to have correctly interpreted your expression. “I’m Lumencia! I live here with White Hat and the Zug-bug and 624, too! Have you met 624? He is the _cutest_ grumpy bear and he’s got such _soft_ fur! Hey, what’s your name, anyway? Neither White Hat or Zuggy told me!”

“Wait. Did you just say a _bear?_ ”

“Yeah! But we’ll get to that later,” Lumencia waves your concern off, still all pep and smiles. “So what’s your name?”

A bit at a loss, you mutter your name, complete with a shrug. You almost want to apologize, if only for being burned down to the social skills of a rock.

“Oooh, nice! Well listen, you sit there and eat and then when you’re done and all ready, I’ll show you around, okay? It’ll be _so_ awesome!!” 

“U-uh… sure,” you say, with yet another shrug. “Yeah. Sounds good. Um, nice… meeting you…?”

You trail off, because she’s already bounced well out of the room, leaping out into the hallway with an excited giggle. 

Huh. 

Well that sure was a thing.

You sit back with a familiar sense of resignation and start to shovel in your breakfast. It’s not bad, mind, but you’re still a bit lethargic to the matter of eating. 

_It could be worse,_ you figure, taking a sip of juice. _There could be more silence._

For now, you’ll take every strange favor from the multiverse – because apparently that’s a thing that exists now – that you can get. 

One thing you can’t handle anymore is the silence.

-

With breakfast packed away, you decide you’re ready to take on the rest of this place. Tempting as it is, you can’t just lock yourself up in this room forever. Even if you decide that oh yes you can, you’re pretty sure that either White Hat or Lumencia will come in after you. 

So, resigned to fate once more, you take up your tray and dishes and step out into the hall.

The rest of White Hat’s manor isn’t so different from your room, really. White paneled walls, also lined in turquoise roses, standing on chestnut baseboards that run along wooden floors so well tended they gleam beneath the lights. Everything is so… tidy. You almost feel guilty for stepping out into it, looking like hell, a worn blemish on perfect order. 

“Hey!!”

You jump as Lumencia bounds right at you, your heart shuddering in your chest. God, you’d even _expected_ her and she’d still managed to startle you. 

The young woman lands just short of you, dark eyes sparkling in all her excitement. “Oooh, good! You’re ready to go?” 

“Um… yeah, just…” You motion to your other arm, where you’re holding your breakfast stuff. 

“Oh. You didn’t have to worry about any of that, silly!” Lumencia snatches it all from you in one fluid movement. Everything flies into the air for a precious few seconds, and then she’s snatching it all up with a precision you can't believe you’re seeing. “I would’a come in and gotten that stuff, myself! It’s kinda one of my jobs ‘round here, y’know? 624 is _supposed_ to help me out, but eh, he’s such a lazy bear, and gets _so_ grouchy when you try to get him up to do anything if it’s not breaking stuff. Of course, he’s usually grouchy anyway, sooo…!” 

You nod along. You’re not sure you’ll ever get used to Lumencia, for all the bounce and cheer and that near constant smile. It’s almost unnatural. You hadn’t seen a smile in some time, and you can’t help thinking that maybe that’s why you stand here and bear it. 

_Because it’s a nice change._

“C’mon! Kitchen’s as good a place to start your tour as any,” Lumencia says, taking you by the wrist and tugging you along. “I’ll even show you my stash of snacks! I gotta keep ‘em pretty well hidden, ‘cause otherwise 624 will snatch ‘em!”

Your eyes widen. “The bear will… steal snacks. From the kitchen.” You can only think of the occasional black bears you’d seen on your way up to the north. Huge animals, ridiculous walls of teeth, claws and pure muscle, more than willing to knock your ass sideways if you get between them and a dumpster. “It… stays in the house.”

“Well _yeah,_ goof, where’d you think he would stay?”

“I, uh…”

Lumencia giggles. “Probably a pen outside or something, huh?” she hedges, snickering when you nod. “Yeeeah, I wouldn’t see that panning out. 624 can bust out of just about anything you put him in! And White Hat prefers to give him free range, anyway. I think maybe he’s hoping that’ll get 624 to stop being so grumpy or something, know what I mean?”

No, you’re pretty sure any wild animal given free range is just going to end up killing someone, but on the other hand, Lumencia seems to feel safe enough. You might be overthinking the logic of this place just a tad.

“Maybe,” you mutter. “Sorry, I’m not meaning to make this weird.”

“Don’t worry about it! Come on, let’s go!”

You’re led into a bright and rather cheerful looking kitchen that’s about twice the size of any other you’ve ever seen. Its décor is about the same as you’ve seen thus far; white panels, turquoise roses, though you see some knickknacks thrown into the mix here and there. 

Along the windowsill above the polished steel sink where Lumencia deposits your dishes, you can see smiling blue and white kittens with big polished eyes. Running high up on the walls are shelves bearing beautifully painted plates; roses and violets, ivy knots, even a sunset over a beach.

“Fun fact,” Lumencia says, “White Hat painted a few of those himself!”

You blink. “Huh.”

“Uh huh!” She grabs your wrist again and pulls you along farther. “Come on, come on! We’ve got a whole lot of stuff to see! And then we gotta figure out something for us to do later!”

“H-hey, uh… I’m not trying to be rude, but… uh…”

Thankfully Lumencia stops, mid leap almost. “But what?” she asks, canting her head.

Sighing, you draw back a little, shaking your head. “I’m…”

_What?_

Honestly, you can’t decide what you feel. You’re anchored in place, you want to keep moving. You want to go back to sleep, you’re scared to even close your eyes again. You want to scream, you want to draw back. Awake and in broad daylight here, you’re forced to confront a few terrible realities you don’t feel like facing right now.

A bouncy, super fun house tour isn’t going to _fix anything._

Lumencia approaches you very carefully, looking at you with concern. “Hey… are you okay?” she asks. “Do you still feel sick? I mean, you can go back to sleep for a while if you’re not feeling up to it, it’s totally cool! You can say no!” 

“I’m not so sure that _is_ what I want,” you answer, drawing a slow breath. “I guess… this is all a bit much. It’s a lot to take in. Lot of… changes.”

She nods sympathetically. “Yeah. I heard.”

“You… heard?”

Lumencia shrugs. “Not like secrets don’t get around,” she says through a frown. “I guess this whole thing’s really crazy to you, huh?”

“Just a bit.” You look up at her, about to apologize again.

“Hey, hey, don’t sweat taking your time with all this, okay?” Lumencia cuts across. “And if you wanna talk about it or anything, I can totally show up and listen. You’ve got friends here. Some of the best friends you can have. I mean, I dunno if that helps…?”

The hope almost burning in her eyes decides that matter for you in an instant.

_Because yes. Yes, somebody, anybody, is better than the silence. Somebody, anybody is better than screaming downstairs and pretending that someone lives down there, pretending you heard the response that you made up in your head because reality is just too much to deal with. Somebody, anybody, is better than telling yourself that the house owner will eventually come back, so you might as well cook rations for two, even though it’s stupid and a waste and you know it, but even false hope is so much better than nothing._

For the first time in a long, long while, you manage a smile.

Half forced, but a smile.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” you say, before deciding that movement is better than sleep at this point. “Let’s keep going. You can show me more, okay?”

Lumencia grins. “Okie dokie! Let’s go!!”

-

You’re given quite the tour, though half the entertainment comes from having such an energetic guide, really. 

Lumencia bounces and skitters from room to room, and the nicest way you can word it is it’s like watching a squirrel struggle with a crack addiction. At a blazing speed, she whirls you through a drawing room, a music room, a parlor, a game room, the upstairs hall, the east wing – along with the solid white door to White Hat’s office.

“Can we go in?” you blurt out, loathe to admit that you’re tempted. You can’t help it. So you’re just a smidge curious about this being that saved your life, nursed you back to relative health after swooping in from out of goddamn nowhere. 

Who can blame you for _that,_ exactly?

But Lumencia frowns, shaking her head. “Uh-uh. Prooobably better if we ask first before I show you the office,” she says. “Believe me, I want to, buuuuut… gotta respect boundaries, y’know?”

“Right, yeah,” you say, however reluctantly. “I mean, yeah, I get it.”

“Hey, I’m sure he’ll let you see if you ask! I mean, worst that can happen is he’ll say no, right?”

You nod. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Okay, let’s keep going!” 

Everything about the house is sorted, screaming of practicality, of reason, and deliberate care with bold italics. Every shiny grainwood surface is polished, not a speck of dust on the white curtains or their turquoise and gold tassels. 

White Hat also possesses quite a number of strange, alien trinkets you’ve never seen before. There are clocks with hands that spin along squiggles and runes you can only guess at. There are paintings that, in the early morning light, you swear are shimmering with hints of movement. On the occasional bookshelf, you’ll see tomes with titles written in what you know for a fact is not a language any human has ever seen. 

“Last but not least!!” Lumencia has dragged you back downstairs, and you’re starting to get winded just trying to keep up. She leads you down a hall, and through a rather large archway that immediately descends down a flight of steps. “Thiiiiis is Zuggy’s lab!” 

“Zuggy?”

“Doctor Zug!” Lumencia replies. “I dunno if you’ve met him, yet?”

“Not… personally.” You do faintly recall a few very _interesting_ snippets of conversation, though. Something about how you’d make a _fascinating_ specimen, and something about wanting to test a dart gun.

Lumencia laughs. Looks like you’re wearing your thoughts on your sleeve. “I know he might seem kinda… grouchy.”

“Right. Grouchy.”

“But he’s so super smart, and amazing at coming up with all kinds of gadgets and potions and shields and armor and all kinds of stuff that heroes and good guys use,” Lumencia says, and you can see the genuine admiration on her face, hear the high esteem in her voice.

Puzzled, though, you have to interrupt. “Hold on, he makes stuff for good guys?”

“Well, yeah! That’s what White Hat does, here! Heh, guess I get to be the one to welcome you to the HQ of White Hat Incorporated! A company that sells wares to heroes that need stuff to fight and knock out all those nasty villains!”

“I didn’t think money would matter in the multiverse,” you mutter, with just a touch of cynicism. “Is that _really_ what makes _all_ worlds go ‘round?”

Lumencia shrugs. “It doesn’t to White Hat, but a lot’a heroes insist on paying him really well for all his trouble,” she says. “Eh, it’s a customer base of heroes, so, of course they’re gonna be generous. But all he really wants in return from his clients are connections. He just wants to hear about any worlds where Black Hat might be, about anything going wrong, about anything he could be doing to help.”

Well, that does clear up a few mysteries for you, possibly.

“Is… is that how White Hat found out about…?”

Lumencia only offers you yet another shrug, though she doesn’t seem pleased about it. “I’m sorry, I dunno all the ins and outs of the business. You’re gonna have to ask ol’ Dubya about it.”

You can’t help a small snort. _Dubya._

It may have been a name you'd given him in feverish delirium, but you like North better.

“Hey look, made you laugh!” Lumencia is giving you a Cheshire Cat grin. She gestures for you to hurry downstairs with her. “Now come on, let’s go! Zug-bug’s lab is one of the best parts of the whole house!!”

_Somehow, I doubt that._

Even in spite of your instincts, though, you descend the steps after her.

_Not like things can get worse, after all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HURRAY FOR NEW FRIENDS.
> 
> And likely next chapter will contain MAD SCIENCE SHENANIGANS. >:U


	4. rude science

“All right, 624. Now, see if it holds up against this!”

Before you even finish descending the stairs with Lumencia, you hear a shattering roar just ahead, one that rattles the pictures hanging in the halls behind you. You feel your heart leap, and you can’t deny freezing for a solid few seconds when a guttural snarl follows. 

Lumencia reaches back to tug at your wrist, still grinning. “It’s okay, nothin’ to be scared of,” she says. “That’s just 624!”

 _Just_ 624? Making all that horrible noise, it’s _just 624?_

“Yeah, sure,” you mutter as you let out your drawn breath. “Just a really pissed off bear, nothing to worry about, she says.”

“Aw, don’t be a spoilsport, c’mon!”

As you both enter the open doorway, you arrive on the threshold of what looks every part the lab of… well, a morally questionable scientist. You both plunge into an antechamber of shadows, lit only by the pulsing green glow of all sorts of machinery. You look up to see rabbit-ear antenna crackling with electrical volts, you see tables accented by the gleam of shackles, workbenches lined with bubbling flasks and test tubes filled with compounds you can only guess at. The only thing missing, really, is the stentorian crash of thunder announcing that you have indeed walked into the dwelling of a mad doctor. 

You can remember seeing this set-up in plenty of sci-fi B-flicks, but you can’t help conceding that up close and personal? 

It’s just a _touch_ more sinister. 

“ _This_ is the lab of a scientist who works for… a heroic company,” you murmur in your disbelief.

“Sure!” Lumencia doesn’t seem the least bit shaken, never mind how out of place she is down here. “White Hat lets him keep his, uh… what’cha call it…” She ponders a moment. “Aesthetic…?”

“That sounds right.”

“Yeah, aesthetic! White Hat lets him keep it so that he can ‘flourish creatively in his element’, but he’s preeetty darn clear about what’s okay and what’s not.” Lumencia pauses to count off on her fingers. “No human experiments, no non-consensual testing, no unethical science, no dark magic!”

“Huh.”

You wonder how good Zug is at minding his step around those boundaries. 

When you opt to venture on, shadowing Lumencia, it isn’t long before you’re both met by the sight of none other than Doctor Zug himself. He’s in a more open part of the laboratory, holding up a defensive arm that’s well braced with a round, shimmering blue shield. 

And considering that shield is the only thing standing almost idly between him and a large, pissed off bear? Yeah, mad scientist or not, you’re glad he has that much.

The bear raises its hulking arms, bringing them down with a crash against that shield with such might that you almost cry out. It’s hard to watch, and it’s harder still to even believe what you’re seeing when Zug only grunts and buckles his legs a little under the strain of holding his own. You can’t believe it. You’d call bullshit if you hadn’t seen it with your own eyes.

Somehow, Zug is holding up under the duress of the bear’s attack. 

The beast winds its arms up, unsheathing lethal claws that lash against that shield as it cuts loose another roar. Zug is shoved back a foot or so, growling a bit under his breath, but to your amazement he’s otherwise unharmed.

“Holy shit…” you breathe out, spellbound.

“I _know,_ right?!” Lumencia practically squeals. She’s next to dancing in place, giggling, all the while Zug continues to have his only defense hammered into by a creature that has to be at least four times his mass. “He’s always making super cool stuff like this! Now do you see why I come down here so much? He’s like a total genius, y’know?”

Zug lets off another sharp grunt as he doubles back, the shield above him glowing in bright pulses. The large bear squares off his opposite, panting haggardly. 

“What’s the matter, 624?” Zug drawls. You can practically see the smug look under his... paper bag. Yes, a paper bag, with only a pair of round goggles to emote through. “Been lying around the house a bit too much, these days?”

The bear rumbles, winding an arm the size of a young maple trunk. Along its neck, you can just make out the rise of magenta colored hackles. “Rrrrraaarrrrmmm.”

“Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it?” Zug taunts. “Looks like you’ve packed on a few pounds over the past couple of weeks, you useless glutton.”

624 flashes his teeth, claws sliding out.

“Ooooh, round two!” Lumencia says.

You might be a bit ashamed to admit it later, but you can’t help leaning a bit on the balls of your feet in anticipation. Screw it, a scrap like this between a mad scientist and a monster bear? Definitely not something you see every day. You almost wish you had a little bucket of popcorn.

“Now, now, that’s quite enough, Doctor Zug!” White Hat intervenes, though, and that’s when you notice at last that he’s been standing quite calmly off to the side this entire time beside one of Zug’s workbenches. “I think I’ve seen enough for this test trial, thank you!”

Doctor Zug hesitates, but a second later pincers his fingers along a silver band around his wrist. The shield crackles like static before fizzling out completely. “Yeah, whatever,” he mutters, sliding the band off. “So do you like it or not?”

“Like it? I simply _love_ it, my dear,” White Hat replies, with a wide grin so guileless it’s almost downright criminal. His eyes shine with sheer adoration, even as he steps out into the ring to award 624 a pat on the head and an affectionate scratch behind his ears. “And you didn’t do so badly yourself, my big fuzzy friend! Still packing quite a wallop, aren’t you? Yes, you are! _Yeees,_ you are!”

624 awards the entity a flat look that screams, simply: _Please go die in a fire._

“Oh, now, don’t be such a grump.” White Hat is content enough to give 624 a soft pat on the nose, then turns back to Zug, undeterred. “But the work you’ve done so far is marvelous, Doctor Zug! Do you think this will be done in time for Friday’s broadcast?”

Zug scoffs and rolls his eyes, almost as if affronted by the very question. “Do dogs piss on brick walls?” he retorts, adding before a frowning White Hat can voice his disapproval, “Yeah, it’ll be done. _Boss._ ” 

You can’t help noticing just how derisive Zug manages to make that title. It’s the sort of inflection you throw on when discussing the stink of cat piss on your curtains.

While White Hat’s frown doesn’t vanish entirely, he does give Zug an almost curt nod. “Good show,” he murmurs. And looking up, that’s when he seems to take note of his audience. “Well good afternoon, Lumencia! Ah, and look who’s up and about now,” he says, taking notice of you. “Sleep well, dear?”

Fumbling your fingers a bit, you nod. “Yeah. Yeah, slept fine.”

“They wanted to come down and see Zuggy’s new project,” Lumencia says, beaming. “I told ‘em there was nothing to be scared of!”

“Says you,” Zug mutters. “Long as they don’t make a habit of coming down here when they aren’t welcome.”

You’ll take a shot in the dark here and guess that by this, he means you aren’t welcome at _any_ time. Somehow, you doubt Zug is a social butterfly with the heart of a marshmallow underneath the brutal, bloodstained steel and the notes of sadistic glee in his voice.

White Hat clucks his tongue. “Now, now, Doctor Zug, let’s leave the theatrics at the door for the time being, hm?” He waves you over and calls your name, still smiling with all the good cheer of enjoying a casual picnic at the park. “I suppose this is good timing, after all. Come on, there’s no need to be shy! This is Doctor Zug, the resident scientist here, not to mention the star engineer of the company that I host from my home, White Hat Incorporated!”

In hesitant steps, you cross the lab and stand almost toe to toe with Zug, who stiffly offers you his hand. You clasp it in a firm shake. You don’t even need to see his face beneath that paper bag to catch his disdain, to know that this is sheer obligation on his part. You politely offer him your name. 

Zug squints an eye at your introduction. “Heh. Your parents hated you that much, huh?”

“Doctor Zug,” White Hat cuts in, “ _Manners,_ please. Or perhaps we need another mandatory workshop on the importance of professionalism?”

“Oh, blow it out your fu…” Zug trails off upon seeing an unmoving sternness in White Hat’s expression. He pauses, chewing over his next words, then gives with a defeated sigh. “No, sir.”

“Good.” Pleased, White Hat motions for you to join him at the side of the giant bear. “It’s all right,” he says gently, when at first you remain rooted to the spot. “624 can be a bit of a grumpy Gus, but I assure you, he means nobody in this house any real harm! Under all the growling, he’s really a good boy!” White Hat reaches up to ruffle one of the bear’s scruffy looking ears, still smiling in the face of 624 drawing his lip back in a fanged scowl.

“Yeah, yeah, go on!” Lumencia urges you from a few paces back. You turn in time to see her awarding you a thumbs up. “Go pet him! He really likes being scratched on the back of the neck, that’s his favorite!”

It takes quite a bit of rummaging for your courage, but you manage a few paces forward until you’re finally facing the furry, barrel shaped bulk of 624’s chest. Months’ worth of honed instincts are screaming that you’re a prize idiot for doing this, that you’re going to die if you don’t get out of the range of that thing’s claws, but you steel up your will and force yourself to stay put. If White Hat and Lumencia trust him enough, you decide, then maybe you can extend an effort. 

The bear fixes you with a hardened gaze at first, and his large nose gives the top of your head a few gracious sniffs. Petrified, you go still. Your mind runs back to a few miles outside Gray Creek, where clambering out of the shattered face of a store front, you’d found yourself a few feet away from a black bear that had come into town looking for an easy meal. That sucker had been huge, an easy six feet on its hind legs.

624 has him beat by a foot and about two hundred pounds.

Of course, White Hat strides up beside you as if this is all nothing. Still smiling, even as he awards 624 another affectionate pat on his blunted snout. “You have nothing to worry about,” he says, with a tone that’s so strangely calm, it feels almost alien in this place. “It’s as I’ve promised, no one in this house is here to hurt you, and that includes this big grump.”

624 snorts. A few cold flecks of snot and spit dapple the side of your face before you swipe it off with your arm.

“Now that wasn’t very polite,” White Hat scolds him, even going so far as to wag a finger at the monster bear that looms a solid foot over him. “624, what am I to do with you?”

Rolling his eyes, 624 lets out a blustery sigh through his lips. “Rrrrrrrrmmmmm."

“Could try some time with a muzzle and a shock collar and maybe see how a few days without all his precious treats curbs his attitude,” Zug suggests. “Maybe then he’d get motivated to make himself useful around here.”

When 624 whirls on the scientist with a furious growl, White Hat is rather swift to step between the two and keep them both at arm’s length from one another. “All right, all right, that’ll be enough of that,” he cuts in, easing 624 back while fixing Zug with a sour look. “Nothing to be done about it! You two stop that. We won’t be bickering when we’ve got company.”

“Seriously, Zug,” Lumencia says with a pout. “If you’d stop being so mean to him, then maybe 624 wouldn’t be so grouchy all the time!”

“Whatever,” Zug grumbles. “Just take our esteemed guest and get ‘em the hell out of my lab, already. I’ve got work to do.” Before White Hat can so much as interject, Zug is already pacing off to another part of the lab. He wavers like a mirage in the dim dungeon lighting, and then vanishes almost completely with the metal brace of his shield on hand. 

You and Lumencia exchange wry looks. “Charming,” you can’t resist mumbling. 

Lumencia laughs. “Yeeeeah, you should see him when he doesn’t have his coffee. But while he can be kind of a jerk, he does make some really neat stuff! It's even neater when it blows up!”

 _Blows up?_ You look at her incredulously, then tack on a mental note about not coming down here, ever, if you can help it.

White Hat steps between you two. “Yes, yes, Doctor Zug can be a bit, ah… _churlish._ ”

Lumencia snickers, gnawing her bottom lip and illustrating your feelings perfectly.

“But! That doesn’t negate any of the fine work he’s done here for the company,” White Hat continues. He urges you into step beside him as he starts to venture off into a different part of the lab altogether. “Let me show you. However crude he can be at times, Doctor Zug deserves every ounce of credit he’s gotten while he’s worked here at White Hat Inc. I… don’t suppose I’m getting ahead of myself, am I?” He looks down at you with a flash of concern.

“Nah, I already told ‘em the basics of the place, boss,” Lumencia says, joining White Hat’s other side. “Company that sells to heroes, we help ‘em swat bad guys, all that good stuff!”

“Ah, good! Very good!”

With 624 lumbering behind, the three of you walk through the lab in a direction very pointedly opposite of Doctor’s Zug’s. You bypass more sinister work tables full of equally menacing tools, all dark polish and gleaming edges. You pass rows of iron barred cages stacked against the back wall, accented in bulky padlocks the size of your fist. You pass drums and sealed vats decorated in orange biohazard flowers, and you shudder, trying to imagine what any of this is doing in the basement of a company that’s supposed to be aiding the order of the multiverse. 

White Hat and Lumencia don’t seem to mind it in the least.

 _His aesthetic,_ you remind yourself with a deep breath as you walk along. _Just his aesthetic. No unethical science, no dark magic._

Eventually you walk into a small, rounded antechamber, walled with shelves that are loaded with colored bottles, flasks, little clay pots inscribed with runic languages you’ve never seen before. The smell is the inside of every cough syrup bottle you’ve ever scented, the liquid metal scent of antifreeze, the sickly sweet smell of rotting apples. It clings to your throat on its way down and finds you coughing a bit into your hand.

“This here is the apothecary,” White Hat explains. “And within it are the cures, serums and elixirs for all sorts of ails that are cooked up by evil magic. You’ve got serums for returning a shrunken hero to normal size here, antidotes for brainwashing chemicals there, and of course…” Looking solemn, he reaches to one of the upper shelves to take a sea green bottle by the throat, swishing its contents a little. “Doctor Zug’s latest work, the cure for that disease that was unleashed into your world.” 

You only stare numbly back. It’s a bit surreal, as a matter of fact, to be facing down the very reason you’re still alive as it hangs there in White Hat’s hand. 

Without the contents of that bottle, you know you would have died slowly. Painfully. Just the way Black Hat intended it for everyone across your version of Earth, while it descended into anarchy and agony before the sun set a final time. 

Suddenly, your animosity for Doctor Zug is dust on the wind.

“I…” You look away. “I need to thank him, then. For…”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Lumencia says, reaching over to pat your shoulder. “If ya still feel obligated, I’ll pass it along. Zuggy doesn’t scare me.”

“Okay, but why does he even _do_ any of this, exactly?” you ask, motioning at the assorted potions all around you. “I mean, no offense or anything, but he doesn’t really seem like he would be the type to… enjoy it.” In fact, you can’t help but think he’d be far more suited to work for Black Hat than anyone else. 

White Hat manages a smile, but you don’t miss the burdened sadness belying it, not for a second. “That might be a story better suited for another time, my dear,” he says. He motions your little tour along before you can ask much further. “Come along, we do have a few other things I’d like for you to see, and then I suppose it’ll be about time to get started on lunch!” 

Alongside Lumencia and 624, you fall right back into step behind White Hat as he exits the apothecary on the other side.

The farther along you go, you can’t help wondering just how many stories there are to be told, alongside the bizarre one that your life has become in a matter of days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this update is so slow! work got really crazy and then i wrestled with what turned out to be a false positive for some malware on my laptop. :U FUN STUFF!
> 
> anyway, thanks for reading! <3


	5. new day, new life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for this update taking a while! holidays at workplaces everywhere, amirite
> 
> anyway, hoping a longer chapter will make up for it!

Lunch isn’t all that eventful, save for the fact that this time around, you’re taking your meal in an enormous dining room. It's a whole new shindig you feel under-dressed for, complete with pressed napkins, a white crystal chandelier, all the bells and whistles you’d have once expected from a five star restaurant.

It’s just you and Lumencia. White Hat had excused himself to work on lunch while insisting that 624 come with him to help. You can’t be too certain how a bear helping in the kitchen meets sanitation standards, but to hell with it. In small towns where the food had been run down to bare bones? You’d filched a meal or two out of a dumpster and damn the consequences.

“Maaaan, it’s takin’ a while, huh?” Lumencia asks, resting on her elbow. “I don’t mean anything by it, but showin’ you around gave me a great workout! I’m starving!”

 _I very much doubt that,_ you can’t help thinking, but don’t say. “Yeah, I’m… I’m a bit hungry, too,” you agree instead. At least you have your tact. “I guess that’s a good thing, though, that I wanna eat again.”

Lumencia frowns. “Yeah, guess you wouldn’t wanna eat when you’re that sick, huh?”

“No.” You fold your arms a little, resisting the urge to shudder. Along the crooks of your elbows, you have tiny, white crescent scars to remind you of just how sick you’d really been. “And I’m pretty sure I don’t wanna be that sick again, ever.”

“I hear ya.”

The two of you sit in a silence that you can’t help feeling a little at fault for. It’s a little frustrating, honestly; in human company again, you’d have thought you would remember how to make small talk. Small talk about what, though? The best way to pick the lock on a front door? The telltale signs of rabies on animals you run into at night?

White Hat, thankfully, is a quick cook. “Lunch is ready,” he announces as he ducks his way through a pair of white slatted batwings into the room. He pushes covered plates along on a little dining cart.

Ambling in behind him is 624, holding a tray of empty glasses, a pitcher of water and a pitcher of what looks like iced tea. Grumbling, he practically slams it onto the table, somehow without spilling a single drop.

White Hat approaches what appears to be an intercom panel right by the batwings, pressing a thumb into a little white button. “Doctor Zug! Lunchtime!"

“Ugh, for fuck’s sake,” you hear Zug growl on the other side. “Look, do ya want the prototype properly tested by this evening or not?”

“Doctor Zug,” White Hat cuts across sternly, “Do I need to slip a few drops of soap into your water here, to wash out those dirty words?”

“Try it and see what happens.”

“If you’re ready to stop posturing, doctor, I’ve said that lunch is ready. Everyone in this house eats together, you know this.”

“But I’m _working_ on something,” Zug insists, sounding as harried as every teenager that’s ever had to lay down an X-Box controller.

“Whatever you’re working on can wait while you have a proper lunch. Now, please put it aside safely and come on up,” White Hat says. “If you need assistance, I can be down there in just a moment.”

Zug groans on the other end. “ _No._ I’ve got it. Be up in a second.”

“Thank you, dear,” White Hat practically sing-songs into the intercom as he releases the button. Probably for the best, you wager. You can only imagine the flurry of ‘dirty words’ flying in Zug’s lab right now. “We’ll check on him again in a couple of minutes or so. In the meantime, let’s get lunch started!”

“Awesome!” Lumencia takes her plate, lifting the cover to some grilled chicken, mac and cheese and green beans. “This smells great, Dubya.”

White Hat chuckles. “Well! Your sushi yesterday was a bit of a tough act to follow,” he says with a wink. He hands you a covered plate as well, and you lift the cover to a chicken breast alongside some rice and vegetables. “Thought you might need something a bit easier to digest. But it’s lovely to see you with an appetite, finally.”

You stare down in awe at it. Stupid as it would have seemed a year ago, here and now it’s possibly the most amazing meal you’ve seen and smelled in months.

“Thank you,” you manage, your voice tiny. “I… appreciate it.”

“Oh, think nothing of it,” White Hat replies, grabbing for a pitcher. “Water? Or perhaps some tea? I tend to add honey to tea as I make it instead of sugar, as a fair warning. I prefer it to processed sugar, you see.”

“Honey’s fine, I’ll have tea. Please.”

As White Hat fills the glass in front of you, the door on the other side of the room flies open. It permits a rather pissed off looking Doctor Zug, who storms over to the table and yanks out a chair before flopping down into it.

“All right, all right, I’m here,” Zug snarls. “What’s for lunch? Better not be any more of that sashimi crap or I’m gonna puke into my bag.”

“Oh, you’ll like it well enough, doctor,” White Hat says, his tone chipper and quite content to ignore the other’s rudeness. “But a little patience first, if you please.”

He steps away from the pitcher to fetch another plate on the tray. Now, this wouldn’t be so unconventional, if it weren’t for one glaring fact: the pitcher kept in midair, still pouring a steady stream of tea into your glass. The pitcher merely sits there. Floats there. It stays canted like a struck relic trapped in time while your glass fills.

You stare up at it somewhat dumbly, trying to puzzle out how it’s even possible while resisting the urge to run your fingers around it. No wires, no smoke, no mirrors. It’s not some parlor trick; you can see the tea sloshing in your glass until the pitcher rights itself again once it’s full. Its duty ostensibly fulfilled, it drifts to the table as softly as a snowflake, not a drop spilled.

But what bothers you the most?

No one else seems to notice it.

 _They know._ The conclusion bobs in your head, even if your brain refuses to call what you’re seeing logical. They know, but they’re used to it. This is all him. This is White Hat, using…

Magic?

_No, because magic is a load of bullshit._

But then, a lot of the things you’ve seen these days were supposed to be a load of bullshit. And yet, here you are.

You let out a held breath and try to concentrate on your lunch instead. White Hat happens to be as good a cook as he is quick.

As long as you keep your eyes on your food, you figure you won’t get distracted by magical tea pitchers, mad scientists, or angry magenta bears that can apparently step in to serve as co-chefs. You catch glimpses around the table, around your lunch date in Wonderland, complete with a hatter who’s as strewn in riddles as he is in white. Lewis Carroll, eat your heart out. Not even all the best cut shrooms in Alice’s yard could make up something like this.

 _What a world,_ you settle for thinking of the whole thing. _What a world down the rabbit hole._

-

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lumencia asks. “You seemed kinda... distracted, at lunch.”

You assure her as best you can. “Yeah, I… um…”

“This here is our rose garden,” White Hat continues. He’s walking a short distance ahead, leading what’s become a tour of the outside of the mansion. “We tend to use the space for growing herbs, spices and other ingredients Doctor Zug might need in his research, but this is for sheer recreation!”

Through the crown shaped arch of a Victorian picket fence, you can see a small bank of low grown rose bushes sporting white, pink and red buds. You don’t even need a second glance to know that it’s been well tended, and with gentle hands.

Lumencia gives you a nudge. “One of his pride and joys,” she says coyly. “I tried growin’ something in here once and it ended up trying to eat a neighborhood kid!”

“Yes, that was a bit unfortunate,” White Hat mumbles. “That was the last time we ever ordered from _that_ catalogue, to say the least.”

“Aw, c’mon, White! Not like I would have actually _let_ it eat the kid, but he was going right up to it and hittin’ it with a stick through the fence.” Lumencia shrugs. “He needed a little rattling.”

White Hat frowns his disapproval. “Whatever you may think someone needs might be just the opposite, my dear. You could do well to remember that.”

“Pffft, sure, sure.”

“It’s very nice,” you say, speaking the utter truth. You behold the mansion’s trim and deep green lawn, the vibrant color of the flowers growing in patches at the feet of the rose bushes, the careful way it’s all labeled as it sprawls along the white fence. “It’s beautiful. You have a real way with these plants.”

White Hat can't seem to help his pride at that. “Ohhh, well thank you, dear,” he says. “I suppose you could say it’s one of my personal spaces. When I’ve the time for it, I often come out here to either catch up on my reading or to simply clear my mind once in a while. Fresh, open air, there’s nothing quite like it!”

Can’t say you disagree, there.

“Now, if you’ll follow me, I can show you a bit more of the property.” White Hat gestures for you and Lumencia to keep following as he strides back towards the house. “There’s a bit more to see before I have to check in on Doctor Zug’s progress and see if I can’t catch up a bit on my work, myself! Why, by then I think it’ll be about time to get dinner started!”

Lumencia bounds after him like a deer, while you follow right behind them. Lunch gave you quite a bit of strength back.

-

Evening draws on the house pretty fast, and dinner goes about the same as lunch, really.

“White and I take turns cooking,” Lumencia says when you ask as you both sit down to wait. “Which means tomorrow, it’s gonna be my turn again. You’ll _love_ it! You haven’t _lived_ until you’ve tried my chili!”

You don’t miss that spirited gleam in her eye, nor are you surprised by it. Lumencia doesn’t come off as one to do things halfway.

“What, so is the kitchen a little battleground for you two or something?” you can’t help cracking with a small smile.

“Pffft, _what?_ Noooo,” Lumencia says. A pensive beat later, she adds, “I mean, okay, maybe there’s a wee, tiny bit of healthy competition…”

“Uh huh.”

“Really!” Lumencia insists. She’s still smiling that wild smile, though, which you’ll take to mean that you’re right. “Sure, he might have a few thousand years of practice on me, but hey! He’s still trying to wheedle my tiramisu recipe outta me, so I’m doing something right, damn it!”

By that point, in spite of everything, you can’t help yourself.

You actually laugh for the first time in ages.

Dinner comes rolling out, with White Hat quite proud to serve a fresh lasagna. Zug comes trundling up from his lab in as foul a mood as ever, but even he seems to have an appetite for White Hat’s cooking as he digs in. Whatever he’s been up to in his lab has left him ready to eat.

“Not bad,” Zug mutters between bites. “Had better, but at least I don’t wanna puke right into my own mouth.”

“Oh, quit bein’ such a brat, Zuggy,” Lumencia says.

“But then how will I ever be treated to the delight of hearing you bitch, Lum?”

“Doctor Zug,” White Hat cuts in, his eyes narrowed. “This is your second warning for today, dear. _Language._ ”

“Right, right, yeah, yeah.” Zug settles for spending the rest of the meal in terse silence, content to clean his plate without making much in the way of conversation or eye contact with anyone.

You glance at 624 near the end of the table, just in time to spy the bear rolling his eyes.

You’re a bit quiet, yourself, as White Hat and Zug discuss the mechanics and specifics of the shield device that you all saw him working on earlier today. It’s a bit of a dry listen, so you find yourself tuning out and concentrating instead on enjoying your meal. As it happens, it’s only a step farther up in paradise compared to lunch. It’s an actual, home cooked meal. You’ll take it a thousand times over canned food, instant food, the jerky you chew the salt out of, the gritty stuff you’ve had to prepare over campfires while vaguely hoping it stays down.

 _I’ll take this, too,_ you think before you can stop yourself. Sitting at a table with other people. Eating with other people. _Other people who won’t either take my food or rip each other apart for the chance–_

A big gulp of tea, crisp and sweet as it goes down, and you press the thought from your mind.

For now, it’s about the present, and for once you’re not going to fight White Hat on thinking about that instead of the past or what lies waiting in the future. For now, it’s about some damn good Italian food and tea. It’s about sitting at a nice table with these people, these people who are kind enough to have saved you and taken you in.

 _I’ll take it,_ you decide to keep it simple. _I’ll take it, I’ll take it._

So take it, you do, with another bite of warm cheesy pasta.

-

At around eight thirty, White Hat calls for everyone to head into the living room for what he calls the weekly staff meeting. As you shuffle in behind Lumencia and 624, you can’t quite shake the knot of unease rising in your stomach. You’d like to think you’re no narcissist, but you can’t help thinking that your recent addition to the household might have something to do with it.

In the rather large, sprawling living room of plush white carpet and oil pastel portraits and Victorian structure, you sit somewhat uncomfortably on a cream colored loveseat by the fireplace. You feel mismatched here. A greasy stain on a white curtain. A mess on perfect order. Not that the other patchy staff members of White Hat Inc. seem to click so smoothly into this order, but you’re still what’s considered an outsider, compared to the rest of them.

You simply sit there, quiet, shifting your weight.

624 flops like a sack of potatoes on the carpet, shaking the pictures in their frames and sending a sharp tremor up your legs.

“Goodness,” White Hat remarks at the rumpus as he steps in. He sees everyone seated, and greets them courteously. “Oh, good! Looks like we’re all here, hm? Good evening, everyone!”

“Hey, can we make this quick, Dubya?” Lumencia asks. “We all wanna go home.”

White Hat looks baffled for a split second, but then he shakes his head just as Lumencia starts to snicker. “All right, all right. If we’re done being silly, we can get to a few issues that bear discussion, particularly before tomorrow evening’s broadcast.”

From the sofa your opposite, Zug raises his hand. “I vote we throw ‘em up on Craig’s List,” he says, jerking a thumb directly at you. “But that’s just me.”

…Well, it’s better than other less palatable things he could have suggested.

“Zug.” The warning in White Hat’s voice rings crystal clear, and Zug goes right back to slinging himself against the cushions. “Better, thank you. Though while we’re on the subject, now’s as good a time as any to formally acknowledge our new guest.” He beams around your name as he turns to you, and you feel your face redden with heat at the swivel of four pairs of eyes on you. “We’ve all had the chance to meet them, but if they would feel at all comfortable, telling us a little bit about themselves…?”

You flinch. You know that White Hat’s intentions are solely good here, but still. What can you even say? _Hi, I’m just your average schmuck, really. I picked up a few new hobbies in the past month, like making a bow out of a pine branch and setting traps around my campsite in case some psycho with an axe or a cleaver shows up, so… I know how to make one hell of a poacher’s knot!_

“U-um…” Your heart flutters a bit. “Hi. Uh, I know that this is all… that, uh, that I’m kinda…! Uh… well, I…”

“You enjoy deep conversations and long walks on the beach?” Zug offers dryly.

“Aw Zug, just shove it, already,” Lumencia snaps. When she looks back at you, she’s awarding you a thumbs up.

It only makes you feel a little more awkward, honestly, but you smile gratefully back. “Heh, sure. Beach is always a nice distraction. Anyway, uh…” You start to prattle off a bit on a few of your hobbies, your living situation, a few of the things you enjoyed doing back then. The lighter stuff, preluding Patient Zero and Black Hat’s broadcast and the first wave.

It’s a whole other brighter chapter gone, like losing childhood a second time.

“And… that’s how it was, up until… well…” You lift a hand. They likely know the exact reason you’ve ended up here: their boss had gone world hopping, found a sick stray and brought them back home.

“World went to hell and you were the only one left alive,” Zug concludes. “Yeah, I know. I’m the one that found the cure for that crap.”

“Right. I wanted to thank you for that, by the way,” you blurt out, shifting beneath Zug’s penetrating look. “For what you did. For finding the cure.”

Zug’s already rolling his eyes. “Whatever, as if I did it for _you,_ of all reasons. You could’ve died and rotted for all I care. I was interested in keeping a sample of the disease to further study its genetic coding, and I couldn’t even get _that_ because–”

“We’ll go ahead and say that he means ‘you’re welcome’,” White Hat cuts across, clearing his throat. “With that being said, yes, they’ll be staying with us for a time while they recuperate from their rather unfortunate circumstances. I expect that no one here will have a problem with that, will they?”

“Nope!” Lumencia pipes up. “I say they can stay!”

“Two things,” Zug says. “One, they stay out of my lab. Two, they stay the hell out of my way. Other than that, fine, whatever. You people act as if I actually care what goes on up here.”

624 lets off a noncommittal grunt, rolling on the floor to better reach around and scratch at his rear.

“That, I suppose they would say, is that,” White Hat declares, looking pleased as punch. “Now, before we adjourn our little meeting here tonight, I’d like to put in a couple of quick notes regarding tomorrow evening’s broadcast.”

“Broadcast?” you ask.

“Commercial,” Lumencia clarifies. “We fire ‘em out to advertise to heroes and let ‘em know that we’re in business if they need any help!”

“Precisely. Our ratings and views have been on the rise quite a bit lately, and I’d simply like to remind everyone here that you’re all doing a wonderful job so far,” White Hat says.

Lumencia straightens where she sits and shoots him a little mock-salute, while Zug’s own salute is quite fleetingly quick and one-fingered.

“I don’t want to put pressure on any of you,” White Hat continues, either oblivious or outright ignoring Zug. “I only want to remind you all to keep right on doing what you’re doing! We maintain our professionalism, we keep the explanation of our product brief and easy to understand, to appeal to rookie heroes, and most importantly, we’re ready to answer any questions that any customers may potentially have. With a friendly, professional tone, might I add,” he’s quick to tack on before Zug can speak his opinion.

White Hat goes off the rails a bit to explain the specs of Zug’s latest invention, the particle shield projection device that you all saw at work earlier. He explains its radius, its durability against certain elements, as well as the tenants of its basic care and maintenance. Truthfully, you tune out a little about halfway through. It’s fascinating, but you can feel the day wearing you down to your last minutes awake.

“Any questions?” White Hat swings a quick look around the room.

Zug is idly picking at a thread on the sofa, though Lumencia is sitting ramrod straight and drinking in every word, every detail of White Hat’s lecture. No questions arise.

“All right then, I’ll say this meeting is adjourned. Time to get ready for bed, everyone. Remember, you can do as you please for the most part, but lights out at eleven!”

“Sweeeet! TV time,” Lumencia says, hopping up out of the chair she’s been reclined in for about the past half hour. She looks your way hopefully. “Wanna come hang out and watch?”

“I would, but… I don’t know if I could stay awake for very long,” you reply honestly, your tone apologetic. “Maybe tomorrow…?”

“Oh no prob, don’t worry about it! I’ll even look up a movie we can watch!”

You can’t help liking the sound of that. A simple pleasure to anyone else, but one that was very swiftly lost in the disease and chaos of your old world. “I’d like that,” you say. “I’ll see you around, Lumencia. And thanks, for today.”

That earns you another goofy grin, another thumbs up, and you depart for your room with the barest hope that maybe you’ve made your first real friend since early spring.

-

You find new pajamas neatly folded and waiting for you on your bed. Deep blue, casual, the material marshmallow soft as it runs through your fingers. You can’t honestly say you’re not eager as you change right into them. They beat the hell out of sleeping in your clothes, or hitting the nearest dollar store in the middle of the night and hoping that they have something left. Taking clothes from the dead was where you’d drawn the line.

Heaving a sigh, you fix the bed with a numb, stony look.

Maybe you’ll luck out again with the nightmares tonight, but you know firsthand that luck runs out.

A polite knock on the door diverts your attention. White Hat once more calls your name from the other side. “May I come in, dear? Is that all right?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Um, it’s fine. Come on in.”

White Hat strides in, cheerful as per his usual as he regards you. “Hello again,” he says, chuckling a little. “I was going to point out your new clothes to you, but looks like you beat me to the punch! I hope they’re comfortable for you.”

“Oh yeah, they’re fine. Great, even,” you say. “Thank you. You didn’t even have to…!”

“No trouble at all, dear, no trouble at all,” White Hat replies with a wave of his hand. “I also came to check in and see how you were feeling after your first real day, here. Your first day up and about, I mean.”

“A lot better than I was. I felt like I needed to get back on my feet again.”

“I’m so glad to hear it!” White Hat’s typically good humor flickers for a moment as he frowns, mulling over something. “I also… wanted to apologize, personally, for Doctor Zug’s rather insensitive remarks this evening. However you’ve been warned of his disposition, still, there is no excuse for that level of disrespect.”

 _Except there kinda is,_ you think. _He’s… well, evil as fuck._

“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” you settle for saying. “I’m a bit thick skinned. Trust me, you don’t have to worry about my feelings.”

“Still, I intend to have a talk with him tomorrow about his demeanor.”

“Um…” You can’t help stumbling your way around another mental block as it comes, the second you seem to have his attention. It rolls in like a fog, these little gaps, where you stagger to find the words you need when you deign to speak at all. “White Hat, I… I wanted to say something to you, too.”

White Hat waits patiently. Not a sign of judgment. “Yes, my dear?”

By now, you don’t like thinking back to that first evening awake. It feels like an ancient fever dream at this point, but it’s been clinging to the back of your brain since this morning, colored now by your shame.

It’s something you _need_ to say. You’ve learned not to let words trickle off to be forgotten.

“I wanted to apologize, too,” you sputter, “For attacking you. Or, um… trying to. I know that you know that I thought you were him, but still, I just feel like such an…” You stumble for another word, now aware of White Hat’s feelings about swearing. “I feel like such a jerk for it, now. I mean, if I’d known…!”

The entity wastes no time resting his hand on your shoulder, urging you to stop. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” he says, his tone as low and kind as it was when you had woken up to the fire spinning along your arms. “That particular mix-up happens far more than you think, believe me. No harm done.”

“I also wanted to say thank you,” you surge on, encouraged by the fact that you haven’t fucked this up yet. “Thank you, for even doing all of this. For this room, for the clothes, for the food, for letting me even stay here, for…” You’re startled by a sudden swell jagging up into your throat, but you force the words out. “Thank you. Thank you, for saving me.”

White Hat doesn’t say anything, at first. He simply rests his other hand on your shoulder. “There’s no need to thank me. I’m just glad you’re all right,” he says at length. “I thank all the goodness in the multiverse for that, dear.”

You hold his gaze for all of about two seconds before you have to look away, blinking back tears. “Still…!”

He leans around your shoulder, peering straight at you with that ancient smile of his. The one that betrays centuries of experience, centuries of his own personal battle. “It’s all right,” he says quietly. “You’re more than welcome, that’s never a question. And I promise, I’m going to try my best to do right by you.”

“You’ve already done more than right by me.”

“Then allow me the chance to do just a little more,” White Hat says. “And no, you’re not going to owe me anything for any of it.”

You’re speechless. Which works out fine for you, because you take the silence to bury that growing urge to cry as White Hat retreats a pace.

“I’ll leave you to get some rest.” White Hat bows a bit at the waist, his slender fingers at rest along the brim of his hat. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Yeah. I’ll be okay. I just… I just wanted to say that.” Your shoulders feel about a world lighter, now that you have.

“And I appreciate it,” White Hat says, his smile growing. “Now get some sleep. The house’s official time for breakfast is eight thirty, if you’d like to join us tomorrow.”

“Sure,” you reply, nodding. “I’d like that.”

He nods back, and vanishes into the hallway. Just like that, it's done.


	6. close-up

“Salutations, my fellow heroes,” White Hat says, bowing a little at the waist with a gracious sweep of his arm. “This is White Hat, here to deliver you more of everything you need to make your world a safer place!”

A few feet his opposite, there stands what looks like an enormous steel spider. Crowning a thatch of spindled legs, there sits a TV camera in white and blue casing. Its single lens lets off a whir as its head turns, crane-like, to trace every last one of White Hat’s movements.

White Hat himself moves with a practiced grace about the garden, where he’s decided to film this little venture. You and Lumencia have settled for spectating from a little stone bench at the foot of the white picket fence.

“May I proudly present yet another genius invention of our company’s star engineer,” White Hat continues, gesturing for Zug to step onscreen. “What are you presenting us with today, my dear Doctor Zug?”

The armband of the shield device in hand, Zug trudges up beside him like a man on death row. “It’s an energy shield apparatus. Capable of deflecting projectiles, absorbing bullet trail damage, and catching extensive shock in any hand to hand combat situation.”

“Now if that isn’t exciting,” White Hat trills. “It sounds like quite a development, Doctor Zug! But perhaps a demonstration might be in order?”

“Why yes, of course,” Zug replies almost sweetly, before cupping a hand around his mouth. “I’d be more than happy to! Only if my oh-so-lovely assistant here would be so kind as to _move his **fat ass!**_ ”

“BAAAWWRRRRR!”

The elderberry hedge behind the pair comes crashing down with a raking swing of 624’s arm. The bear lunges straight for Zug, claws as thick as knives out, eyes gleaming with murder.

Zug has some sharp reflexes. In a near demonic blur, he has his arm outstretched and defensive. The shield appears, wavering up in a pale blue ripple that folds back at its edges like the head of an umbrella. 624 takes a swing for naught. His claws slash uselessly against the shield, the blow itself knocking Zug backward a measly half inch.

White Hat steps around them. “Not the demonstration I would have specifically asked for... But as you can see, we here at White Hat Incorporated have spared no expense in offering our heroes only the finest protection, in their ongoing battle against evildoers, everywhere!”

“Yeah,” Zug spits. “Evildoers and fat lazy assholes alike!”

“RAARRRRRGH!!” 624 lets off another thundering roar, teeth bared and muzzle next to foaming. He doubles back as his next blow is deflected, pissed off as ever when his claws don’t even leave so much as a dent.

White Hat frowns. “Doctor Zug, now that kind of language isn’t permissible or appropriate, not when we’re trying to show them how – _624!_ ”

In lieu of trying to slash his way through Zug’s shield himself, the bear’s flocked over to a tiered white marble fountain not too far off from the azaleas. Taking it up in a lethal embrace, he proceeds to rip it straight out of the earth with the ease of plucking weeds. It crackles out of the concrete foundation, leaving it buckled in pieces.

“Oho, _now_ this might actually get interesting,” Zug snickers. He hauls the shield up a little, leaning around it a brief second to flash the bear a smug look. “C’mon, 624, try it!”

“Rrrr…!!”

“Yeah, c’mon, go for it! Club me like a baby seal!”

“ _Doctor Zug!_ ”

624 flings the fountain with all his might. There’s a mighty rumble as it explodes to pieces on impact, shards and shrapnel flying with the abandon of machine gun rapport.

You and Lumencia ride the same wavelength. The two of you scramble down behind the bench, just in time to look up and watch a spray of white marble rocks flit over your heads.

Over the fence behind you, there’s an almost catlike yowl and the sonorous thud of a body on the street. “Oh, god!!” It’s the voice of an old woman, high and scratchy as any cartoon you’ve ever watched back in your old world. You and Lumencia exchange winces. “Oh, there goes my other hip!! Mother of god! I’m gonna miss The Wheel!”

White Hat looks absolutely mortified, of course, his jaw hanging open in mute horror. “Oh, no! Heavens to Betsy!” He makes a mad rush for the fence, pulling himself up to glance the still screaming old woman. From what you can see as you peek between the boards, she’s rolling like a shot bird in a plaid tweed sweater on the other side (swearing pretty colorfully, you might add). “Oh, perhaps we should have done all this inside, after all…!”

“Or maybe,” Zug intones smugly at the camera, “That old bitch should’ve had one of _these_ babies. I mean, am I right? Just remember, from any other company, these things wouldn’t be cheap.”

“ _Doctor Zug._ ”

“Look, I’m just saying I don’t make hip implants.”

“That’s not what I was…!”

White Hat clutches at his face, fetching a heavy sigh. He motions at the large metal spider that stands not too far off observing it all, still recording.

“Just… just cut. Please.”

-

“Is that what… all your broadcasts are like?” you pipe up at dinnertime, wishing you could enjoy Lumencia’s chili in spite of the awkward silence.

Ten minutes into the meal, and no one has said a word since the broadcast ended and dear ol’ Mrs. Ignis Hunter had been seen off to urgent care. Nothing broken, but she’ll be sporting a purple bruise on her hip to remember for some time.

“No, dear, not at all,” White Hat sighs. “I assure you, we don’t have nearly as many mishaps as what happened today.”

Zug stuffs his face with a slab of Italian bread. “I’unno what you’re so pissed about,” he splutters through his full mouth, spraying crumbs out of the bottom of his paper bag. “We got calls, didn’t we? A whole hundred orders in the first day, even!”

“Yes, most of which were having a real knee-slapping laugh at what they thought was a _staged_ accident,” White Hat groans. He hangs his head between his hands, letting off what could be the tenth exasperated sigh within an hour. “I suppose it could have been so much worse than a bruised hip, but… oh, goodness, that poor thing…”

“Hey, blame the bear,” Zug says, shrugging. “He’s the one that went apeshit with the fountain.”

“Well no _duh!_ You were the one riling him up!” Lumencia points out.

624 snarls to concur.

“When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.”

“You _were_ provoking him, Doctor Zug,” White Hat says crisply, lifting his head just long enough to send the scientist a sharp look. “And I believe you’ve just earned yourself a mandatory workshop tomorrow evening on appropriate language in the workplace, my dear.”

“Oh the _fuck_ I have!”

“Thank you for reaffirming my decision.”

“Goddamnit!” Zug slams his spoon into his bowl with a clatter. “If I don’t go, I’m gonna end up in that Disney song dimension for an hour again, aren’t I?”

White Hat shifts in his chair, as if nothing short of pained at the very prospect. “Only if you force my hand."

“Yeah. Remember when I threatened to blast an entire hospital with a freeze ray if I have to hear ‘Let It Go’ one more time?” Zug asks, before a gleam of utter loathing flashes in his goggles. “I wasn’t kidding. I _really_ wasn’t kidding.”

“Eat, Doctor Zug. We’ll discuss this tomorrow at breakfast.”

You almost can’t help choking on your chili.

-

The next week staggers by, both in time and in the time you bother keeping.

Gradually, the haggard abuse of the virus recedes as you eat, heal, sleep. White Hat can’t seem to help remarking to you each day about how much better you’re looking, how much stronger you’re looking, how well you’ve recovered, encouraging you in some way as you pass one another.

You pass those first few days with Lumencia, shadowing her as she goes about her tasks of either maintaining the house or running errands in the small town close by. Sometimes the two of you are even accompanied by 624, and the fact that he doesn’t send people running and screaming the other direction is nothing short of baffling to you.

Nights are the worst of it.

It’s when you’re alone.

Some of the nights are dreamless; gray waves that pass when sunlight flits through your blinds. Other nights, not so much. Other nights, you dream of shotgun blasts in Painter’s Rock, Tennessee. Other nights, you dream of running through the wet outskirts of a lake, some sort of swamp, your boots squelching in the morass with your arms tight around yourself. No idea what that one means, but you seem to like waking from it with your eyes burning and your chest aching as if it’s been torn open.

When that dream comes, it’s very, very hard for anyone to get you out of bed in the morning. Those are what we in the business will call Bad Days, rightly capitalized. You want to spend most of those days under the blankets, aching, because it’s better than feeling nothing.

You otherwise try to fall out of the habit of lying there awake for two hours at a time each night, dreading what’s coming. It’s a roll of the dice – good day, or Bad Day.

At some point, through some weary night, you get a little tired of waiting for the gray or the gunfire or the silty stench of the swamp.

For being so new to a mansion this huge, you manage to find your way to the back patio well enough with only a couple wrong turns. You pad along as silently as you ever have, and needless to say you’re very well practiced at that. You move toe-first like a ghost on the carpet and hardwood floors, and the sliding door shuts with a timid squeak behind you.

White Hat’s back patio is a nice place to come out and sit, to think, look up at the grand black swoop of night sky. For late summer, it’s actually a little chilly out. You relish in that, lying back in an elegant French deck chair and treating yourself to a nice view of the stars.

It’s better than just lying there running circles in your own head.

You don’t have time for _that_ bullshit. You never did, that’s the point. You feel like you should be _stronger_ than that.

There’s the rap of a few memories jumping to crowd your head that night, and you wrap your arms in a death grip around your own knees. You spoil for a fight, telling them all to fuck off, because you’re trying to enjoy a cool night outside with a rather beautiful view. Knowing now that not only are there other galaxies strewn about out there, there are other universes, you feel a whole lot smaller now beneath that sky.

Some splintered knot of driftwood lost in the middle of too many seas to count.

On the last clock you’d checked, it had been about three in the morning.

You can’t say you’re surprised when you hear the door slide open about ten minutes or so later. You’re also not surprised when a woolen white afghan slides down over your front, and White Hat seats himself comfortably on the deck chair to your right.

_Shit._

Looking up, ready to apologize, you half expect a lecture about being up way, way past the mansion’s curfew.

It never comes. White Hat smiles, swishing his ankle up to his other knee. “Rough night?”

“Yeah. Little bit.” Your fingers dig into the afghan, pulling it tighter around you. “Guess I wasn’t so quiet after all.”

“If it makes you feel any better, you move much more quietly than most humans I’ve met,” White Hat chuckles. “I just happen to be up and vigilant.”

“You don’t sleep?”

“No. I’ve no need for it. If there’s no rest for the wicked, there’s even less for us.”

“Huh. Well that hardly seems fair.” You affect a pout as White Hat chuckles again at that, and you lift your gaze back to the sky. “Sorry I’m breaking the rules, though,” you mumble after a beat. “I just… needed to get out.”

White Hat nods, tenting his fingers under his chin. “It’s all right,” he says. “I understand.”

“So you’re not mad?” You lean a tad out of the snug cocoon you’ve made of the afghan. “If I’m being a pain in the butt, you can tell me, y’know. Like I said, thick skin.”

“Not at all,” White Hat says. “I only followed you out because I was just a little concerned.”

“Oh.” You chew into your lip. “Um.”

Hell, what are you even supposed to say to that? Nearly a week here, and you’re still not quite accustomed to anyone being around to give a damn about you.

White Hat looks right at you, and his face alone lends you the insight that maybe he’s more than just a little concerned. “Is everything all right? Did you have some bad dreams?”

“Didn’t get to sleep tonight, actually,” you reply. “I’m wide awake.”

“I see.”

You relax a little when he seems willing to leave it at that. He looks back up at the night sky, and so do you. “Hey, White Hat?” you ask a few minutes later, if only to break a silence that draws on a smidge too long for your liking.

It feels a little too much like another night at home, you suppose.

“Hm?”

“I’ve been thinking, and I’ve been meaning to ask. Are there really… I dunno, _infinite_ worlds out there?” you ask. You trace the three central stars of Orion’s Belt, and wonder how something so huge as a multiverse even can exist. You wonder how many other skies, in other worlds, have all these same constellations or perhaps new stars altogether.

White Hat can’t seem to help beaming. “As many as there are stars in all of them,” he says with the warm fondness of long years. It’s the same recollection old sailors have of the seas they’ve crossed. “With worlds coming and going all the time. Some of them pass in the Lilliputian blink of an eye. Others… you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them were older than I am!”

“So what creates them?”

“Well, there are plenty of theories and stories about, but…" The entity shrugs. " Not even I can say I have all the answers, dear.”

“Even for as long as you’ve been around?”

He crooks his head at you with a cheeky grin. “Now, was that a crack at my age?”

You can’t help smiling back. “Nah. Though… is it rude to ask you how old you actually are? I mean, I dunno. You’re not human, but I don’t think you really look all that old, either…”

White Hat sighs, though he doesn’t seem at all offended by the question. He cradles his chin in his hand, tapping his finger, seemingly rolling numbers about in his head. You shift a little. Is he really so ancient that he has to give or take a few years? “It’s difficult to measure, honestly. The curves of space and time manifest a bit differently about the multiverse. In some worlds, I’m billions of years old. In others, I’m but a few seconds. I’m quite a few years your senior, to be sure. Thousands, if not millions.”

“So how old would you be in the world you were… y’know, born in?”

He goes quiet at that. “Even that’s difficult to say,” he says, at length. “Where I was created, it’s not easy to explain.”

You shift a little more, unsure of where to steer the conversation. There’s a pressing question you want to ask, curiosity is crying out near the back of your mind, but if the subject itself is already making him uncomfortable…

“Yes, you would be right,” White Hat says, snapping you out of your thoughts. “Where I come from is the same place, the same heart from which Black Hat was forged, as well.”

_Forged?_

“I, uh…!” You scramble for a cover-up, another question you’d wanted to ask, but it’s hardly any use now. “I didn’t mean, uh… I meant to ask…!” You give up not even halfway through. “Man, sorry for making this weird.”

“Far from it, my dear,” White Hat replies, looking vaguely amused. “You’re not asking anything Lumencia hasn’t already. In fact, I’d say you’re treading a bit more carefully than she did. She chattered questions at me a mile a minute within her first few days here!”

“Did Lum come from a different world, too? Like me?”

He smiles. “Her story isn’t mine to tell, I’m afraid.”

You settle for that, nestling back underneath the afghan. Forged. Apparently they were forged from the same place, you file the information away for later, though you can’t say how useful it’s going to be. There are plenty of other questions storming your mind, plenty of answers you want, but half of them can’t turn back time.

Instead, you grasp for the other question that’s buzzing about your ear right now. “So, now that I’m doing better,” you begin at last. “What’s gonna happen, now that I’m…?”

White Hat sobers right off, looking very thoughtful. “That’s a matter in your hands,” he says quietly. “And one that I’m more than willing to help you with, however you choose.”

“Okay, but what _are_ my choices?”

He rolls an indicative hand towards the open sky. “One choice you would have would lie out there. Or rather you have millions of choices, to be more accurate.”

“You mean I could go live out in another world?” You can’t help a flicker of sheer astonishment, just imagining it. “Like, on a whole other _planet?_ ”

“If you wanted,” White Hat replies with a nod, gaze still tipped solemnly toward the stars. “You could choose another version of Earth or a whole other planet, where we would do everything we could to help you start again. Whatever you would need, you would have it. I promise, we wouldn’t simply dump you off and leave you with nothing or nowhere to go.”

Sitting up straight as a plank on your chair, you stare at him, gobsmacked, trying to even piece together such a reality in your own head.

Briefly, you no longer see the stars, or White Hat, or the smooth cold cement of his back patio.

You see the inside of the shed you’d stayed in, your first twenty miles or so in the woods out of Ox Creek, Kentucky, about a stone’s throw from the Ohioan border. Far from Painter’s Rock, far from food, the munitions in your gun spent. It had been cold that night. You were nestled by a crank-up lantern that sputtered a weak glow across the shed’s floorboards, listening to rain come down with a jittered sigh on the tin slats overhead.

Hunkered against the wall like a vagabond, watching the lantern die, you’d imagined it. Waking up in your own bed the next morning, the day waiting, the people you knew waiting to hear about your weird as hell dream when you next saw them. You’d squeezed your eyes shut and imagined it with all your strength, and for that night? For that long, cold night with your hunger?

It had been enough.

Disappointing when you woke with a stiff neck, but until then you’d almost been happy.

“Something you’ll want time to think about?” White Hat asks politely, snapping you again from your thoughts.

You almost yelp in surprise, but set your jaw. “I… it’s a lot to take in, I guess."

“It is,” White Hat agrees. “I won’t deny it, it is.”

“I’m not the first one you’ve done this for, am I?”

“No. And unfortunately, I can imagine you won’t be the last.”

“It’s hard to imagine it.”

White Hat glances at you almost casually. “Is it?”

“Yeah.” You think back to the whole reason you’re out here, and you start before you can even stop yourself. “It was only a few months, but a few months is a long time when you’re alone. When you don’t have anything. When you don’t have a way to connect with other people. Or when the people you do connect with turn out to be off their hinges.”

White Hat doesn’t say a word. He sits back and listens while you continue to meander off.

“The one town I tried to stay in, Painter’s Rock, that was one,” you continue on, undammed even as you start to choke. “They shot the sick in that town, that was the way Curtis ran things. They’d drag them out with their wrists tied up. They knocked ‘em down to their knees and just… that was it for them. Some of them were too weak to fight it. Shot through the head. I _couldn’t_ stay there. I _couldn’t._ If I got sick, they’d shoot me, if I didn’t, they’d want me to start shooting.” You shake your head, eyes squeezed shut. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.”

“Are those the things you dream about?” White Hat asks.

“Sometimes.” Your voice trembles as you shiver, and you wonder if perhaps this conversation had been White Hat’s intention all along. You tangle the afghan up in your grip. “Like I said, it was only a few months. But it’s hard. Picturing life back the way it was.”

White Hat frowns. “I can imagine.”

“Sorry for railing off like that,” you say, staring at the ground. “Not sure where all that came from.”

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” White Hat says. “I imagine it’s been sitting with you for quite some time.”

“I guess. A bit.” You shuffle, already regretting the words, too little too late. But whatever White Hat may be thinking, whatever he may have to say of the matter, he’s keeping it under lock and key.

You take that for the blessing it is and keep the rest of your clutter to yourself.

About ten minutes more down the line, and the chill finally starts to seep in through the afghan. You wiggle cold, stiff toes and curl cold, stiff fingers. “Think we should head in?” you ask.

White Hat gracefully rises to his feet, lifting his arms into a lazy stretch before resting his hands in the small of his back. “That’s up to you,” he says. “I’m ready, if you are. I think a cup of tea sounds lovely right about now, if you were interested.”

“Sounds good.”

You trail him in, just as the night falls silent behind you. Somehow, you have a feeling that a Bad Day might not be so imminently in the cards.

-

“Pass the pepper.”

Lumencia bats her long lashes, baring a large smile too sweet to be remotely innocent. “I didn’t hear the magic wooooords!”

Across the table from her, Zug snaps his fingers. “Oh! Right! Sorry. Pass the pepper before I _melt your vital organs into a jelly that runs out of every orifice, you miserable–_ ”

White Hat cuts in with a moderately loud ahem from his end of the table. He peeks out from behind his newspaper, with the mild aggravation of a teacher before some rowdy students. “Doctor Zug, do we really need a workshop on dramatic death threats at the table, dear? It’s not even nine o’clock yet.”

Glowering all around, Zug settles instead for stretching across the table to snatch the pepper shaker, sprinkling a healthy dose on his eggs before digging in. He mutters between bites. You doubt he’s wishing everyone a happy Monday.

You’re run down after the late night you pulled, but at least you were right about it being a gray-wave kind of night. You take in a meager forkful of scrambled eggs and look hopelessly at 624.

“I think we might be the only normal ones in this house,” you remark under your breath at him.

The bear rolls his eyes and huffs.

You take that for agreement and eat.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm shiny hunting in pokemon ultra sun almost solely because i hate myself.
> 
> ....oh that's not related to the story, i just wanted everyone to know. ALSO IF I DON'T UPDATE IN TIME FOR IT, HAPPY HOLIDAYS, FOLKS <3


	7. tour de multiverse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, so as I'm sure you've noticed - or will notice, rather - the names of the characters have been changed. 
> 
> Meaning yes, I will admit upfront that this work has been affected by the kinda-recent discourse regarding the Heroic AU. I do love that AU, I love it a lot, but up until that drama rose I was a bit under the impression that it was a broad, fandom-created thing, with no real specific owner really involved (I credited the owner when I DID find out in the summary, but still). Fandom can be a bit of a tricky thing that way - hell, it took me a while to figure out that White Hat wasn't ACTUALLY canon to Villainous until a friend told me it was AU, so, there you go.
> 
> That being said, I guess you could say that this is me not wanting to disrespect the original creator of the AU, and writing from the more open Valiant AU. Though the personalities of the characters remain largely unaffected (because I mean... it's literally a mirror swap AU), I felt more comfortable writing from an actual, factual open AU developed FOR the fandom, specifically. And well, I do have an actual background in mind for my particular version of White Hat, so I still feel like I can write from this while still retaining something unique to the headcanons I have in mind FOR this version of White Hat. If that makes sense. This shiny hunt for Fennekin is enraging me. 
> 
> ANYWAY ALSO with that being said, I do have an idea for my own Villainous AU that's a bit more of a fantasy take, if people would be interested in seeing it in the future!
> 
> For now though, I will shut up and give you this next chapter. THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH
> 
> i mean thanks for your patience

“Soooo…. you gonna finish that?”

You stare down at your half-empty box of chicken nuggets and curly fries, then back up at Lumencia, who happens to be staring at them hopefully.  Rolling your eyes, you nudge them across the table.  “Fine, here,” you mutter.  “You know, with how much you eat I have to wonder where the hell you put it all.”

Grinning, Lumencia snatches it up.  “Yoink!  And sorry, trade secret!”

Or it’s the fact she runs around the mansion like a properly caffeinated lemur on a strict No Doz regimen, but you won’t bother stating the obvious.

The little fast food joint on the corner of Crown and Derby is nowhere near as good as either White Hat or Lumencia’s cooking, but errands in town hadn’t foreseen you two back in time for lunch.  You’d had to stop in and settle for this, but honestly, you’re not complaining.  As nice as the mansion is, it’s nicer still to glimpse reminders that a world exists beyond the property.  That, and fuck it, sometimes you just need a box of greasy curly fries once in a while.  It’s one of the simpler pleasures you’d missed back home.

Lumencia pops another curly fry into her mouth.  “Mm!  Good stuff!”

“Heh.  You said it.”

“What time’s the post office close again?”

“On Saturdays?  Four.”

It’s about half past two, giving you both plenty of time to mail off a few business-related money orders and see about the company’s P.O box.  Not that there was anything to really worry about.  Lumencia might be a bit scatterbrained, but on the whole she knows how to do her job if even she has to speed up – and maybe do a bit of insane parkour here and there – to get where she’s going. 

Of course, with you tagging along to keep things more on track, Lumencia has found time enough for a few indulgences along the way.  Nine times out of ten, you don’t argue.  You can tell she has a great time showing you around, and likewise you can’t help savoring the small tastes of what feels like your old world before Black Hat had hit the scene.

“Hey!  What do you say we catch a movie after we mail that crap off?” Lumencia asks, still smiling.  “We never _did_ get to see that new flick that came out!”

You smile ironically.  “The one with that guy and what’s her face?”

“That’s the one!”

“You know what, sure.  Sounds kickass.”

“Sweeeeeet!  Hey, throw me one of your ketchup packets, will ya?”

You crinkle your nose.  “Are you gonna straight-up drink it again?”

“I dunno, probably!”

Mouth pursed, you slide the packet over.  She pops in a few more fries, then proceeds to squirt a beautifully arced helping of ketchup straight up and over into her mouth, chasing it with a swig of soda.  “Two points,” she says in a smug voice, then slides the box your way.  “Sure you don’t wanna give it a shot?”

You almost laugh.  “Yeah, I’ll pass,” you reply, ignoring the thorough stares of other patrons at their tables.  It’s progress.  Your first lunch with Lumencia here had felt like they were boring holes straight into you, speeding your heart up just enough to want the hell out of there. 

Three weeks later, you’ve learned to tune them out.

Gulping down another mouthful of fries, Lumencia mutters your name to get your attention.  “Hey!  You mind if I ask you something?  Y’know, just while we’re chillin’ out.”

You stare back at her.  “Sure,” you reply, albeit with caution.  “But that depends what it is.  If this is another ‘shipping’ question, then–”

“Nah, nothing like that.  Though… I dunno, I guess it’s a bit more personal?”  Lumencia draws a long sip of her soda.  You can’t help noticing how reluctant she seems, now.  It’s the composure of one forcing a matter they aren’t particularly excited for.  “I mean, this isn’t my idea of a fun conversation, but… gotta happen at some point, y’know?”

“Lay it on me.”

“So now that you’re all better from that weird super flu thing, are you…” Lumencia can’t seem to help the pained flicker in her eyes.  “Are you gonna be leaving here, pretty soon?”

You sigh.  This conversation’s been a long time coming, you suppose, but you hadn’t expected to rip off the bandage this quickly.  “It’s kind of the whole point, Lum,” you say, “It was the whole point of White Hat taking me up from my old world to begin with.  To start again.  Find a new beginning.”

“Then what from there?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Pick up where you left off, maybe?”

You shake your head,.  “Like I said, Lum, I couldn’t tell you,” you say.  “I remember everything I wanted to do back home.  Everything.  I remember thinking about where I was gonna be in, say, five or ten years’ time and getting kind of excited about it.  But after all that’s happened, I don’t know anything anymore.  I used to have some idea of a direction, but now, there’s just… nothing.”

“You mean you don’t even know what you’re gonna do once you pick out a new world to live in?” Lumencia draws another hearty sip of her soda, staring at you.  “What did you even wanna do back home?”

With another sigh, you list off some of the things you’d had planned for your future.  Your dream job, the talents you’d picked up along your way, some of the things you’d hoped to cross off the old bucket list before the first wave struck.  You’d never been anyone important or special, just another face, another statistic.  Some average schmuck getting along like everyone else, and then Black Hat had crept into your world like a rot and given you the prestige of sole survivor.

If you can even _call_ that prestige, anyway.  More like you were the last little cockroach that had hung on with a few twitching legs.

“After all of that, after the things I’ve seen, just… I don’t know.”

“Kinda hard to wanna pursue a career after all that mess, huh?”

“Heh.  Got it in one.”  You purse your lips, resignation taking over.  “But I gotta figure _something_ out.  Can’t just mope around forever.”

Lumencia looks at you pointedly.  “Right.  Mope around,” she says, raising an eyebrow.  “I mean, the world only ended all around you, nothing major.”

You try to push back the sharp pain that twists like a coil of barbed wire in your chest.  You can’t.  You simply can’t, and for a minute or so you can’t bring yourself to answer.  “You know what I meant,” you manage at last, your voice a shadow of its usual self.

Lumencia nods.  Serious is a bit of an odd look for her that you don’t see too often.  “You don’t… _have_ to leave, you know,” she murmurs.  “You _could_ stay here.  With us.”

Your smile is hollow.  “Is that what this is coming around to?” you ask.  “You’re trying to tempt me?  Have me stay, work for the company?”

“I dunno.”  Lumencia looks up at you almost demurely.  “Is it workin’?”

“Little bit.  But you know I can’t do that.”

“Why _not?_ ” Lumencia asks, looking almost indignant.  “You _know_ that White Hat and I both like having you around and there’s _way_ more than enough room at the mansion!”

“I can’t impose, though,” you cut in.  “I couldn’t do that.  I can’t just depend on White Hat’s kindness forever, you’ve gotta understand that.”

“Oh please, you’re not _imposing,_ or whatever!  You help out around the house and with the errands, like, all the _time!_ You’re more helpful than 624, even!”

“That’s not really a high bar, Lum.”

“Maybe, but that’s not the point!”

You slouch a little in your chair, trying to let the whispering of your neighbors in the booths roll off your back.  “Lum, tone it down a bit,” you mutter, ducking your head.  “C’mon, it’s not like I’m packing my bags and heading out _today._ ”

Lumencia folds her arms, sulking.  “Maybe not today, but you’re _gonna._ ”

“Right.  And you know why.”

“Well, I mean…!  Fine, I guess, I guess I do, okay?” Lumencia all but splutters, tossing her hands up in frustration.  “But it always _sucks._ I get to meet and make all these neat friends that stay with us, and then…”

You nod, comprehension dawning.  “You gotta say goodbye.”

“Yup.  Always.”

“Zug’s not that bad for company, is he?” you ask, attempting a smile.  “C’mon, I bet he’s got a sensitive side and a good heart, deep down.”

When she has to bite her bottom lip as she snorts into her soda, you know the tension’s been broken.  Or at least, you’ve made a fine show of easing it, for now.  “Yeah, okay.  But joking aside…” Lumencia stares right at you, her eyes hopeful.  “Can you promise me something?”

“If it’s to stay longer than I need to, you know I can’t–”

“Nuh uh, nothin’ like that.  If you wanna leave, if you really feel like your place is somewhere else, then… well, it sucks, but that’s that.”  Lumencia shrugs, chomping into another chicken nugget.  “The day you find a world you like, the world you feel like you’re gonna… y’know, start over in?  Can you at least tell me?  Y’know, the day you find it?”

You can’t say you see much harm in that.  In fact, after the past few weeks of getting to know Lumencia as you have, working alongside her, you can’t help feeling as if you would have anyway without the contract of an outside obligation.

“I can do that,” you say, smiling across the table at her as she brightens.  “When I find my place, you’ll be the first person I tell.  But for now, uh, I think our place right now is the post office, before it closes.”

Lumencia opens her mouth, clearly raring with something to say, before she seems to hesitate and let it go.  It’s not the way she wanted to end this conversation, you know that, but you’d cut her off with good reason. 

If she’d managed to keep arguing, she might have tempted you to stay.    

-

The morning you ready yourself for a tour of what you’re calling ‘multiverse real estate’, White Hat beckons you to his office.  You meet him eagerly, though the air between you two is sad enough for the occasion.  It’s akin to a final drive through the country with a friend you know, deep down, you may never see again.  Sure, there might be talk of ‘until we meet again’, there might even be a promise or two to keep in touch, but it never happens.  You’d seen enough of that in your old world, and it’s one of humanity’s worst habits that you don’t see yourself breaking.

Not that you’d know how to get in touch with him from another world, in all fairness.

As you step into White Hat’s office, you’re greeted by the pleasant air of apple blossom, cinnamon, maybe lavender, if you had to guess.  The office is… well, white, and not terribly different from the rest of the house, save for the personal touch of knick-knacks and bookshelves.  It’s all impeccable neatness, angles, not a trace of age or dust. 

White Hat himself is in the midst of polishing off what looks like a grandfather clock, save for the silver plated face being etched with strange, alien runes.  That, and four hands that all seem to be ticking against one another in different directions.  What exactly it’s supposed to be measuring is likely anyone’s guess but his.

“Good morning, my dear,” White Hat chirps, tucking the cloth into his coat pocket.  “How did you sleep?”

You chuckle.  “Think I might have had a bit too much on my mind to manage. I guess I’m… kind of nervous.  Even after a few weeks of being here, this stuff still doesn’t seem real.  Nothing like this existed back in my world.  None of it did.”

“I understand.”

“This is kind of a dumb question, but…”  You press on anyway.  It _is_ dumb, but in for a penny, in for a pound.  “If you have… magic abilities, or powers, or whatever, why even clean the clock by hand?” 

White Hat only laughs.  “While my hand with magic is a deft one… well!  Some things I prefer to keep a bit more of my own touch on.  To be close and personal with the odds and trinkets I’ve accrued, here, I suppose… it keeps me acquainted.  Or maybe I’m just a sentimental fool.”  He gives you a quick wink.  “I don’t suppose we’re here to discuss that, though, are we?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Are you ready?”

“Sure,” you reply, satisfied that you manage to hide your nerves.  “But, uh… okay, how do we do this, exactly?  I’m gonna go ahead and guess you don’t travel around in a police box.”

White Hat blinks, baffled.  “A… police box?  I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

You shake your head.  “Never mind.”

“Then I suppose to answer your question,” White Hat begins, straightening where he stands, “We simply walk along what I call the pulse.”

Well, now it’s _your_ turn to be confused.  You stare at him, a perfect mirror of his own confusion.  “The… pulse?”

White Hat takes up the crook of a white cane tipped in silver, hefting it like an ancient druid does with a carven staff.  “If you’ll allow me,” he says.  “I can show you.  Some things are best taught by experience.” 

It doesn’t look like you’re getting much choice in the matter.  You can already see the silver tips of White Hat’s cane starting to glow, white hot like tiny suns on the edge of a perfect white beam.  They glow brighter, hotter, until you have to raise your hand to shield your eyes when White Hat gives the cane a casual twirl between his fingers.  There’s an electrical crackle, and your ears start to ring.  A low drone at first, spiraling up into a cry until you’re torn between protecting either your sight or your hearing.

And then just as quickly as it began, your ears pop, and the electrical drone fades.  As the gleaming silver light fades, you’re met with nothing but silence.  Dead silence, and what looks like a gray scaled version of White Hat’s office.  Literally as if someone has sapped out all the color, from the rich mahogany of White Hat’s desk to the cherry wood bookshelf to the turquoise curtains, you can’t make out any shades or colors at all. 

Just… gray.

“White Hat…?” you try to ask aloud, but your voice is shot down to a whisper. 

“Shhh.”  White Hat remains right in front of you, popping like a neon sign against the gray-washed scene before you.  He calls your name softly to keep your attention, or maybe to keep you from panicking, or maybe a little bit of both.  “Shhh, never mind what’s happening now.  Listen.”

You listen for a long while in that eerie, heavy silence.  You strain your ears for the skittery tick of that alien clock, even, only to find that it too has gone quiet. 

“Few seconds more,” White Hat assures you in a hushed tone.  “Just listen… listen…” 

And then you hear it. 

Something of a boom, though that isn’t the word you’re looking for.  It’s more of a deep, deep, deep hum, a note that quivers up out of sleep from the depths of the ocean.  It strikes, leaps out at you the same way your own heartbeat would if you lied in bed long enough to seek it out.  Like your heartbeat, once you hear it, you can’t seem to lose the sound of it as it shudders along your every atom.  The sound is giant, _enormous,_ you know by sheer instinct how mightily large it is that you feel stupid even trying to find a word for it. 

You shudder, knees almost knocking as you stagger to keep your balance.  “White Hat, what the hell _is_ that?!” 

“The pulse,” White Hat replies, eyes closed, expression almost reverent as if in prayer.  “That’s the sound, the note of creation itself, dear.  It’s one thread among many, one way among many to walk the multiverse itself.”

“How do we follow it?” you ask, swallowing the thick clump of your now pounding heart.  “How do we walk along it?”

“Take my hand.  Here, you have to hold onto me if you want to walk along it.”

You take his hand without hesitating.

“Good.  Now, just walk with me…”

The next booming hum, the _pulse_ comes rattling along. 

White Hat seems to follow the sound the way any other person would follow a wave as it recedes back into the ocean.  As you two walk, you can see a crackling white rift thrashing along the back wall of his grayed-out office.  Drawing near it, you see the rift start to open.  Another booming hum fills the room, fills your skeleton, fills your brain until it’s fuzzed with static.

You feel a sudden drop in your stomach, the drop of every falling dream you’ve ever had.

-

“One thing to remember about the multiverse, about any universe, is that it’s bound in harmony.  That’s the key of it!” 

Your fingers tighten around his hand.  There’s no telling how the rift has become your road, never mind how it holds you, but you don’t dare to question and nor do you dare to let go.  The swoop of sky overhead shimmers, first rainy gray and then the dull purple of an old bruise.  Squinting finds you making out the faintest traces of what look like stars, thousands of them, millions of them, scattered like diamond shards as far as you can see while the white rift road curves off into that misty stretch of nowhere. 

The pulse rattles through you again, joined by a rush of cold wind, juddering you like a guitar string.  Your grip tightens.  “Holy crap,” you breathe out, your voice garbled in this wispy echo of space.  “North.  North, those stars, are all of those…?”

“Worlds,” White Hat corrects you, and you can hear him smiling.  “All of them.”

“No way…”

“Harmony,” White Hat repeats, the words echoing.  “Possibility, certainty.  Fate, spontaneity.  Light, dark.  Action, reaction.  Dreams, solidarity.  No one knows where it all began, where it comes from, but it’s the stuff of entire worlds.  Iterations of those entire worlds, based off something as grand as a world’s end or as simple and minor as a choice.”

You shut your eyes against the luster, against a sudden rush of vertigo that leaves your stomach churning.  Everything about every step you’re taking feels so utterly _wrong,_ wrong enough that your skin tightens into gooseflesh.  “White Hat, not gonna lie, I think I’m getting… inter-dimensional sick…!” 

White Hat keeps you balanced.  “It’s all right,” he says.  “Just keep following and keep your eyes closed if it helps, dear.  I’ll lead.  It’ll be all right.”

“Do you do this all the time?”

“Yes.  And I suppose all these ill effects you’re feeling are part of the reason humans can’t do it.  You are literally transcending the dimensions that your body was made to handle.”

“How far…!”

“Keep walking, dear.  Just keep walking.”

You walk.

You walk a crackling white rift path, through a labyrinth of brilliantly shining worlds that hang like so many stars in a twisted sky.

-

When you arrive in the first new world, you fall flat to your knees in the grass and fight back the urge to hurl.  You draw quick breaths through your nose.

Kneeling down next to you, White Hat pats your shoulder.  “I’m sorry, dear, I suppose I should have warned you,” he says, while you struggle to regain your composure.  “But I was half-afraid that if I told you, and you came to expect it…”

“Right, right.”  You swallow hard, and thankfully your breakfast decides to stay put.  You force yourself up, though your legs feel like softened rubber.  “Is it always gonna be like that?” you ask, hating how pathetic you sound.

“As far as Doctor Zug has told me, it gets a little better with every trip you make,” White Hat answers.  “So with any luck, the next walk will be a bit better!”

“He comes out here with you?”

“But of course.”  White Hat grins.  “He _is_ a scientist after all, and even as scientists go, his curiosity is _insatiable_.  Though of course, he was traversing worlds long before he met _me._ ”

You’re about to ask, but you stop yourself accordingly.  “Lemme guess,” you say, “Not your story to tell?”

The entity chuckles.  “Starting to notice a pattern?  Come along now, if you’re feeling better.  I think this might be a rather similar Earth to the one you knew.”

It’s only now that you chance a brief look at your new surroundings.  Down below the hill you’re on, you can see the spotty humdrum of a rural town.  If not for your stay at the mansion, you would have been goggle-eyed at the sight of cars rolling through the streets, the sight of people filing in and out of the bank, or a school bus chugging out exhaust as it turns a corner.

 _Like none of it ever happened,_ you think, struggling your way around the concept.  _They’re all going about their daily lives.  It’s literally like none of it ever happened._

“Earth X89-H-5602,” White Hat says, as if it were obvious.  Because sure, what total loser _doesn’t_ have all the versions of Earth memorized?  “The year here is 2014, and while most of it resembles the state of your world, the political structures are a bit different, we’ll say.”

“Different like how?”

“Not that great a difference, really. The United States runs on a parliament now, of about ten different political parties instead of the two your world knew.”

“That’s… weird.”

“Maybe, but it’s done a fair share of nice things for the country, or at least that’s what I’ve read.”  White Hat begins leading the way down the hill, beckoning you to follow.  “We’ll see it up close and personal and see what you think!”

You walk, and the two of you take about twenty minutes to casually stroll within the town’s boundaries.  From there it’s about a half hour walk around the town itself, down an avenue of shops, past a library and an elementary school.

It’s all so… _normal._

“What do you think so far, dear?” White Hat asks, regarding you over his shoulder every few paces as you two stroll down the sidewalk.  “A world you could see yourself getting used to?”

“Could be,” you say happily.  “Doesn’t seem to be a thing wrong with this place.”

White Hat beams.  “And it’s full of people, you could make all kinds of friends here. Now that’s important, you know.  You can’t just keep to yourself the entire time.”

You wince.  “Sorry. I know I’m not exactly socialite of the year.”

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with needing to be alone once in a while,” White Hat says, waving a hand.  “I suppose I simply worry, is all.”

“You don’t have to do that.  Worry on my account, I mean.”

“Perhaps, but I tend to anyway,” White Hat replies, baring you his ancient smile.  “Did you want to stop somewhere, grab something to eat?  Unless you’re still feeling a bit woozy, of course.  We can keep going on, if you’d rather.”

“No, I’m fine.  It sounds good, now that you mention it.”

“All right, let’s turn here and see what we can find…”

-

The next world, you’re not sure how to go about describing.

It’s a world of marbled blue grasses that stretch on for miles.  A black sky springs up from the horizon, streaked in pink and sea green flames like a borealis.  You can make out the barest fleck of a few stars beyond, though they gleam much more brightly than any stars you’ve ever seen.  They’re huge, clear, like broken ice scattered across slate.

Straight ahead, you see what looks like a jungle of black spires, twisting up for miles into the sky.  Most of them are connected by sleek metal bridges, branched out in complex webs across the distance.  When you look up beneath them, you see their crosshatching into terrific feats of alien geometry. 

“What… what is this place?” you ask, aiming an incredulous look up through the bridges.  Your breath escapes you in a puff of cold vapor; you wish you’d thought to bring a jacket in case you came across a world like this.

“This would be a Kyuuaran Y72-C-6619,” White Hat replies.  “If you want a quieter life, something simpler, this world might not be a bad place to start.”

“Is it always dark like this?” you ask, unsure of how to feel about either answer he could give.

“The night is about ten hours, though there comes a period once a year when night falls for five days over the entire planet. For those five days, the Tuan celebrate the presence of what they refer to as _ke’en tetch vic dhu catect._ That’s ah, ‘The Meeting of the Sisters’, referring to the three moons that you can see clearly for that week, of course.”

You blink back at him somewhat stupidly.

White Hat chuckles, looking a little sheepish.  “The language is fairly easy to pick up,” he says.  “And the Tuan are _very_ friendly to outsiders.  Very artistic, too!  They _do_ enjoy their music and stories, as well as from other species!”

You can’t help smiling back.  “Sounds like you know this place inside and out, North.  You visit much?”

White Hat still affects that smile, but you can feel his humor vanishing.  “I do,” he says, a bit too succinctly for your liking.

“Did you… is this one of the worlds you watch over?” you ask, your look turning serious.  “One of the worlds you’ve saved?”

He sighs.  “I’m not in the business of fibbing, so, I suppose I can only tell you that… yes.  Yes it is.  Not a very pleasant struggle against Black Hat here, at all.”

“What happened?”

He stares back at you with such a vivid pain in his eyes that you regret the question instantly.  “Another time, perhaps?” he asks, still forcing that smile.  “I don’t feel this is the time or the place for that, dear.”

You struggle for a second between pressing the subject or letting it go, unable to help your curiosity.  As far as you were concerned, Black Hat was untouchable.  He’d literally collapsed civilization and demolished your world _for fun,_ nevermind how hellish things could turn if he was actually giving it his all…

…That truth alone is enough reason to let it go.  You owe White Hat that much.

You nod.  “Yeah.  Yeah, you’re right.  So, you gonna show me around?”

Good humor restored, White Hat leads you into the vaulted entrance of the nearest spire, where you mount black stone steps to reach the first bridge.

-

The next world you arrive in, well, bad timing would be one way to describe it.

Hell breaking loose would be another.

You land on your feet beside White Hat on what looks like another version of Earth, proudly noting that you’re getting better at this whole ‘walking-the-multiverse-without-wanting-to-puke’ thing.  The small victory is fleeting at best, when you jolt at an all too familiar sound straight ahead.

Screaming.

You note that before you even note your surroundings; the streets of what looks like a busy city, one that’s now rife with crowds of fleeing people who are screaming madly for their lives right now.  A few of them are pointing behind them, a few of them are crying. 

It’s a whole sea of panicked faces, flinging you into the waiting arms of memories you can’t say you’re too fond of.

_“All right, fuckers.  This is how we’re gonna do this.”  Curtis tucks a couple of shells into the shotgun, spitting a dollop of tobacco into the grass.  “From now on?  We do things my way.  My way or the fuckin’ highway, you got it, folks?”_

“ _Watch out!_ ” 

Caught up in the echo of Curtis’ voice, you barely have time to react as White Hat yanks you by the wrist off the street, ducking the two of you into an alley.

Good damn thing, too.  A single glimpse back, and you’re treated to what looks like some sort of electrical blue beam, sawing through the concrete and sending shrapnel flying.  The crowd splits, all of them shrieking in blind panic as the beam dissipates in a flash of blue embers.  There’s next to nothing left of the road, only a long stripped rut of burning earth.

“What the hell…?!” you squeak out, unable to believe what you’re seeing.  You turn to White Hat.  “What kind of place is…?!”

But White Hat is looking at the source, and when you follow his gaze, you see it as well.

It stands on arced legs made from girders, what looks like the bulbous body of a giant iron spider plated in black metal.  Not a monster, you realize, calming yourself with a deep breath.  Not that this makes those giant blue death beams any less unfriendly, but at least it’s not giant spiders on top of everything else you’ve had to deal with.  No, dead center in the rounded body, you can see a thick glass dome, awarding you a nice view of what looks like the machine beast’s mad pilot.

“ _THAT’S RIGHT,_ ” you hear a man’s voice thundering from the depths of the metal spider.  “ _RUN!  RUN, ALL OF YOU!  FLEE THE BEAUTY OF WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!  FOR TOO LONG, YOU HAVE CRUSHED MY BRETHREN WITH YOUR NEWSPAPERS, SPRAYED THEM, STOMPED ON THEM, KEPT US SILENT UNDER THE BOOT OF DEATH AND OPPRESSION!  BUT SOON!  SOON, YOUR PRECIOUS CITY WILL BE RULED BY… **ARACHNERD!!**_ ” 

And wouldn’t you know, he even lets off a batshit monkey howl of maniacal laughter.   

White Hat sighs, shaking his head.  “Looks like someone had a sale this past weekend,” he says flatly.  He points when you cant your head at him in confusion.  Following the upward angle of his finger, you peer up into the slat of underbelly that you can glimpse between a pair of skyscrapers.  It takes some squinting and a hand protecting your face from the sun, but you soon see it as clearly as White Hat does.

Engraved in the machine beast’s chest, you can see the dark glossy outline of a giant black top hat.

“Oh, goddamnit,” you can’t help snarling.

White Hat turns to you, and for a shocking moment you see an entirely different being.  There’s none of his usual softness to be found.  Gone is every vestige of his usual kindness.  Instead, you see the calm but hardened eyes of a soldier before he draws from his gun belt.  You see a sense of order so impeccable, so cold in its determination, it almost frightens you how drastic the change is.  Your friend is somewhere in there, sure, but buried deep beneath something else.

“I need you to stay here,” White Hat says, in a firm tone.  “Stay here, and stay safe.  Do you understand?”

“Uh… sure,” you mumble, managing a shaky nod.  “Whatever you say.”

Hell, not like you’re much use in a fight against a giant robot spider.  And for some reason, you can’t help how that seems to sit so wrongly in your gut.

Leaving you to your thoughts, White Hat gives you a curt nod right back, and then darts like a storm wind back out onto the street. 

“White Hat, be careful, man,” you call out after him, unable to help yourself.

You already know how this will end, he doesn’t need _your_ warning, of all things.

Still, as you gape in horror at the robotic monstrosity wreaking havoc on the township, you can’t help having to swallow your nerves.


	8. a new path

_You look on, helpless, useless, as White Hat squares off in the middle of the ruined street.  You look on, transfixed but horrified, your grip around the edge of the building popping your knuckles._

_This isn’t real._

_This_ can’t _be real._

_This is what you tell yourself as you watch a hero stand fearlessly at the foot of carven rut in the highway, a crumpled tuft of shattered concrete, courtesy of the giant spidery robot dead ahead._

_The spider rears, its enormous front legs circling up into the air with a grinding shriek._

_Another bright blue beam flies._

_People run, they scream, as buildings are disintegrated into smoking rubble.  The civilians become far fewer, now, making themselves scarce before the real damage sets in.  Good damn thing, you say to yourself.  Good damn thing, because anything less would have been far, far too familiar._

_It would have been almost exactly like your nightmares._

_White Hat folds his arms, unmoved as Arachnerd’s metal monstrosity looms over him. “You’ll only be getting one warning,” he says, and somehow his voice is far louder and clearer than you’ve_ ever _heard it before.  It rises far above the crash and thunder of the destruction all around you.  It rises above the screaming, above the panic, above the lunacy, ringing with an otherworldly echo that strikes you like a clapper against a bell the second you hear it.  Gone is that gentle, kind tone.  Gone is that somewhat fumbling demeanor, erased from existence, faded as if it had never been to begin with._

_No, now it’s only business.  The stern, inflexible business of Light standing against Chaos._

_“Stop this right now,” White Hat continues.  “You will stop this minute, and leave these people alone.  This is_ not _acceptable, and whether I’m retired or not, this will_ not _be tolerated on my watch.  Do you understand?”_

_“HM?  WHAT’S THIS?!”_

_The gigantic spider lurches, swiveling the dome atop its body to avail its pilot a better view of this single interloper._

_Surreal as the sight might be, you can’t help your gut telling you that… he has this._

_“ANOTHER PESKY DO-GOODER TRYING TO STAND IN MY WAY?!  TRYING TO OBSTRUCT THE RISE OF MY BROTHERRRRRRS?!  FOOL!  DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!  DO YOU KNOW WHAT I STAND FOR?!”_

_“Thanks to these childish theatrics of yours, I’m quite acquainted with who you are,” White Hat replies, arms still folded.  “And let me reassure you, I know perfectly well what you stand for.  Ego, if not greed.  Your sort are a dime a dozen.”_

_“OH, WE’LL SEE JUST HOW WELL YOU KNOW ME,” Arachnerd chortles.  “IF YOU INSIST ON BEING A PEST, YOU’LL BE TREATED LIKE ONE, THE SAME WAY MY BRETHREN AND I HAVE BEEN FOR CENTURIES!”_

_“I’m warning you now, deactivate your machine and stop this nonsense immediately.  There’s nothing that can’t be worked out through some reasonable negotiation.”_

_“FOOL!  DO YOU THINK WE CREATURES OF THE WEB KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD?  WE DO NOT NEGOTIATE, YOU DISGUSTING LOWER BEING!  WE **TAKE!!** WE **HUNT!!** WE **EAT!!** BOW BEFORE THE NEW KING SPIDER OF THIS WORLD, NOW THAT YOU’VE STEPPED INTO MY WEB!  ARRRRRGHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!”  _

_The giant spider lunges forth, a pair of girder sized legs aiming to strike him down._

_Before your eyes, White Hat becomes a blur as he darts one way, and then the other, next to invisible as he rushes the thing head on._

_You wince as those jointed legs come veering down at him, metal arcs swishing in from on high like hammers thrown by gods –_

**_WHAM!!  WHAM!!_ **

_They collide, mightily, with the shimmering air that hangs about White Hat in a sphere.  The very same shield that had blocked your punches, as a matter of fact. The entity himself stands calmly with his hand out, looking none too impressed._

_“WHAT IS THIS?!”_

_A neon blue flash of that death beam follows, shredding through the air like lightning (you feel the hair on the back of your neck standing up) only to splay back in glowing spindrifts.  A nice light show, but failing miserably to hit its target.  Unharmed inside his bubble shield, White Hat regards the machine’s pilot with annoyance._

_He leaps nimbly from the ground to the broken neck of a streetlight, bent over the sidewalk like a sleeping bird.  Before you can even so much as cry out his name, White Hat's flipped over another flaming beam to land on the nose of the metal beast. He moves with a grace that shames every Olympic gymnast you'd ever watched, a hand on the brim of his hat to keep it from flying off as if he were only out for a stroll.  Before Arachnerd can even react, he whips back his other hand, a hand that now glows golden as a halo in the late afternoon sun._

_The robot staggers, bucking, twisting atop its monstrous legs to throw White Hat off.  It’s getting harder and harder to see much of the action, but you_ do _see White Hat give his cane an expert twirl in his fingers before you catch it gleaming.  You know even as the cane comes down, biting through the metal hull with a wrenching crack, that it’s shifted into a deadly blade.  White Hat drives it in, clutching the new weapon by its pommel, no longer the harmless golden ball of a walking stick._

_“One more time,” you hear White Hat’s voice echo, leaving you shivering.  “Do you surrender?”_

_“TO THE LIKES OF YOU?” Arachnerd thunders.  “NEVER!!  NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS!!”  The robot lurches, still trying to buck White Hat off.  “PATHETIC!  ARE YOUR PITIFUL LITTLE TOYS NO LONGER ENOUGH FOR THOSE HEROIC FOOLS YOU SELL YOUR WARES TO, WHITE HAT?  IS YOUR LITTLE BUSINESS SUCH A FAILURE THAT YOU HAVE TO STEP IN PERSONALLY, NOW?!”_

_“As a matter of fact, we’re doing quite swimmingly these days,” White Hat replies as if they’re conversing over a midday brunch.  “I simply happened to be in the neighborhood. Retired or not, I won’t turn my back and walk away when I see troublemakers like you_ attempt _to be threatening.  Keyword there being attempt.”_

_In a seamless motion, one that runs more the circle of a ballroom sashay than any combative move you’d ever seen, White Hat draws back the snow white blade he’s made of his cane and –_

“Oh man, oh man, oh man!!  And then he just _drove_ it in and tore the controls apart!!  And the whole city was _saved_ and everyone was probably losing their shit cheering for him!!” 

Lumencia titters, throwing herself back on the living room sofa and kicking her feet.

The trance of recollection broken, you smile awkwardly.  “Um… yeah, heh…”

“He’s so, so, _badass!_ God, I wish I’d been there!  Isn’t he the _coolest?!_ ”  Lumencia tosses herself the other way, the better to rest her chin on her hands while her eyes become lost in a dreamy haze.  “He’s the best hero _ever!_ That city was _soooo_ lucky you guys were swinging by!”

“Lucky that _he_ was swinging by, you mean.  I didn’t really do much.”

“Maybe, but he was there _‘cause_ of you, so, take credit where you can get it!” 

You can’t help sighing.  “I wish I… could have.”

“What do you mean?”  All at once the distraction flickers from Lumencia’s gaze, and she’s looking at you with a vague concern.  Over the past few weeks, she’s really tuned into your emotions.  “You sound kinda down about the whole thing.  I mean, it’s not ‘cause I cut in when you were getting to the good part, is it?  ‘Cause I can shut up and let’cha tell it!”

“Nah, you pretty much wrapped it up the same way I would have,” you say with a dismissive wave.  “I guess what I mean is I wish I _could_ have helped out, you know?  All I could do was stand there and watch.  Stand there and _watch_ while people were running, screaming, panicking.  It felt…”

A little too familiar?  Maybe.  You’d wandered in on a couple of good old fashioned riots back in your respective when-and-where, reflecting that perhaps people stocked up on fear because even fear is not quite reality.  Pretending a situation is far worse than it is has a hell of a hand in what some ‘logical’ people would call over-preparation.

Funny, that.

You settle for shrugging, in no mood to explain it that far.  “I dunno.  I just felt… useless.  Like I could have done more, could have helped _someone_.” 

“I think a whole lot of people feel that way,” Lumencia says.  “In fact, uh… well, I know how it feels.”

“You do?” 

“Sure.  It’s why I’m here, after all.”  She looks at you confusedly.  “Did I never tell you that?  About why I’m even here, I mean.”

You shake your head.  “To be fair, I never asked.  I didn’t want to, if it was none of my business.” 

 _After all, maybe you and I are in the same boat,_ the thought comes before you can stop it.  _Maybe that’s why we get along.  Maybe that’s why you wanted to see me.  Maybe the old bastard paid your world a visit too, and now you’re all that’s left._

“It’s… well, kind of a weird story, I guess!  I’m kinda surprised I never told you!”  Lumencia flops back against the cushions, canting her head toward the open bay window her opposite.  It had been cloudy going on rainy when you and White Hat had returned that very evening, and a fresh downpour starts to bead down the glass.  “Huh.  Y’know, it’s kind of a perfect day for stories!”

You smile.  “Sure you don’t wanna spend it watching more anime off Web Flicks?” 

“Psh, no!  Look, I love Lucki Magic Robogirl Death Basket more than anyone–”

“I still don’t understand _half_ of what the hell’s going on in that show, just as an aside.”

Lumencia throws her hands up, exasperated.  “ _Ugh!_ Neither does _Zug!_ I must not be explaining Lucki’s character arc right or something, but the manga is so much better _anyway–_ ”

“Think you might be derailing a bit, Lum.”

“Oh.  Right!  Right…” 

Within moments, Lumencia’s expression fades into a strange breed of calm.  Intrigued, you can’t help leaning forward.  It feels somewhat harsh to think it, but you’ve never really seen any pensive side to Lumencia for as long as you’ve known her.  You’ve seen perhaps a glint once or twice, one time of which was your discussion before you and White Hat had departed, but it’s no stranger a look on her than it was back then.

God, that afternoon feels so long ago, now.  It’s only been a couple days, at most, but somehow it feels like a completely different conversation than it was when you’d walked away.

“There’s… not much to it, really,” Lumencia says with a shrug of near indifference.  “When I was growing up in my world, I always wanted to be a superhero.  My first comic book was Justine Justice, and _god_ she was awesome!  She had pyrokinesis, and she was a computer genius on top of it.  I guess I fell so hard because my world was… well, it had a problem with villains.  As in, if you lived in a city, it sucked to be you because that city was probably gonna get hit by a giant robot or get threatened with death beams from outer space or something every couple of weeks.”

Your eyes widen.  “Holy shit.”

“ _Right?_ I mean we had some superheroes in our corner, too, but… not enough.  Not really.” 

“Was Justice Justine…?”

“Real?  Eh, yes and no.  She was _based_ off a real superhero, but the one she was based on didn’t really wanna get into the comic business.”  Lumencia shrugs.  “Said it romanticized a deadly field, and I mean, I guess I see her point, but… still.”

You can’t say you don’t see her point, either.  When caped crusaders were just fantasy back in your world, it was easy enough to understand it for what it was.  Entertainment, a few harmless ‘what if’s, hardly anything viable.  You’d known the stark difference between fiction and reality. 

Or at least, you _thought_ you’d known.

“Anyway,” Lumencia continues, “I guess some part of me just got tired of seein’ all these scumbags running around, you know?  I knew I didn’t have big-ass arm canons like Red Hawk, and I wasn’t a super computer genius like Techhead, but like any of that ever stopped heroes from doing what they knew was right!  I started training pretty early.  I was doin’ parkour stuff by the time I was thirteen.”

“Did your parents know about it?” you ask.  “Somehow I doubt they would have okayed it, Lum.”

“Nah, probably not.  But… well…”  Lumencia looks away.  Very pointedly, she looks away.  “They didn’t exactly get a say in it for long, if y’know what I mean.”

You stiffen, feeling everything in your head come to a slamming halt as comprehension takes you.  “You mean…”

Lumencia shrugs a little, trying a half smile that fits in all the wrong ways.  “I-I mean…” 

“Don’t try to pretend it’s fine,” you say in a sharp tone.  “You know damn well it’s not.  I’m... I'm sorry.”

“Can’t do much about it now.”

“I’m still sorry.”  You inch over, cautious, not wanting to push your boundaries while at the same time knowing the worry is for naught.  Lumencia and boundaries tend to wave at one another on the street and then promptly keep going.

Reaching out gently, you waver only a little as you offer your arm around her.  You feel so strange doing it, but she throws her arms around you right back.    

“Thanks,” Lumencia murmurs over your shoulder.  “It was a long time ago, but… thank you.  I appreciate it.”   She pushes back from you, bearing an aged smile almost as sad as White Hat’s.  “Anyway, I started doing parkour stuff, really pushing myself to the limit.  I also started studyin’ magic and stuff, trying to pick up on that, though my luck was kinda hit and miss, there. I could pick up some magic, but not everything I needed.  I wanted to not just be a hero, but the _best_ hero.  I wanted to _help_ people, ‘cause no one was around to help _me_ or the people in _my_ town.  If I had to defend our town alone, to hell with it, I’d do it.”

You nod.  “That’s brave, Lum. That takes a hell of a lot of guts.”

“Someone had to.”

 _Or else you end up with what happened to my world,_ you can’t help thinking.  Maybe if your world had had a few more heroes, it wouldn’t have come to the end behind you. 

“I joined up with a small-time hero league.  We weren’t really hot shit or anything, just a bunch of rookies trying to stick together.  I found out about White Hat through the grape vine,” Lumencia continues.  “They said he was the _greatest_ hero who ever lived.  The _best_ hero known to the whole universe.  It was kinda like a King Arthur thing, I think.”

“Where people can’t decide if he’s real or not.”

“Right.  And like, _I_ had no idea if he was real or not, but I was gonna find out!  My world needed him more than anyone!”  Lumencia seems to slip away to a different age, now, the shadows gone from her eyes as her lips quirk in a loopy smile.  “I went universe hoppin’!  With some… _borrowed_ technology that we _miiiight_ have snagged on the deep web market!”

“Uh huh.  _Borrowed._ ” 

Lumencia sticks her tongue out.  “Don’t you judge me.  Anyway!  I went cruisin’ through different universes for a while.  Like, a few years or so.  And then I finally got lucky!”  She slaps on the grin of scratching winning numbers on the lottery – fitting enough, that was _exactly_ what Lumencia had done, when you come to think about it.  “I found him!  I found White Hat!  I knew it by the mansion, knew it by the feel of the place, and I knew it by _him_ when he walked in and found me watching TV in the living room!” 

You stare at her, stupefied.  “You were just…. Lum, you _broke into_ his _house?_ ”

She shrugs.  “The door was locked and it was getting dark out,” she says, as if you’ve just posed the dumbest question in the world.  “Not like he said no!  I bought my own chips from the store, so, not like I was freeloading!” 

By this point, you can’t help yourself.  You’re shaking your head, starting to laugh.  You try so hard to keep it quiet, to bite it back, but it comes in a sudden wave that seizes you.  It’s one of those moments you hear something so stupid, so absurd, it feels like your brain breaks and there’s no other response than laughing until your eyes tear up. 

Lumencia laughs right along with you. 

“I think I needed that,” you say, gasping a bit for air when the worst of it passes.  “So that was it, huh?  You just…”

“White Hat took care of things once he heard me out,” Lumencia says, looking quite a bit more subdued as she delves back into memory.  “But… I wanted to stay, even after.  Because I wanted to train with him.  To become a hero, the _best_ hero I ever _could_ be.  Guess you already know what his answer was, huh?”

You nod, satisfied enough to hear that at least her story had a remotely good ending.  Quite a bit unlike yours, though you try your hardest to keep the bitterness at bay.  You take a breath, inhaling slow to drown it out.  The last thing you need is blind jealousy over things you can’t change. 

Still…

Thinking back to that city, to Arachnerd, to Painter’s Rock, to the first wave, you can’t quite shake the thought that’s caught in your brain like an infection, now.  You can’t rattle free of the thought that perhaps, in some subtle way, fate had guided you with a smoky hand to that last world. 

It had been every bit the brutal reminder of the evil’s rot that lingered in the multiverse.  The evil that _still_ lurked long after it had finished taking **_everything_** you cared about.  The evil that had literally looked you in the eye and **_laughed_** as it unleashed the end, as it unleashed anarchy, unleashed death.  Evil that you knew now, evil that you would never forget no matter how long you lived.  To this day, you can still recite every one of Black Hat’s jovial lines in that video.      

_Even if you were to start again, it would never be the same._

_He would still be out there._

_Others like him would still be out there._

_How long before you have to start again?_

The thoughts had come to you on your way back to White Hat’s mansion, but you hadn’t dared to give them a voice.  You hadn’t dared to entertain the idea, the very _thought_ that a useless, powerless human like _you_ would be able to stop any of it. 

You were no one special.  No one important, no one with powers like White Hat to stop giant deathbots in their tracks…

_Sounds like an excuse._

…because Lumencia hadn’t started out that way, either. 

Would you have that much to live for again, stranded in an alien world with no family?  No friends?  Was there much left fighting for, being a lone survivor unable to live by the lessons you’d learned?  It wasn’t like you could exactly share your story with otherworlders, _lovely_ as it was. 

 _You would be pretending.  And that sounds great, that sounds fantastic, peachy fucking keen, except you’ll go insane pretending for too long.  You’ll fracture.  And frankly, you’re in enough goddamn pieces already._     

“So…”

You turn to Lumencia, broken of your reverie.  “Hm?  What?” 

“Did you… y’know, find a place?” Lumencia asks, with a reluctant air that either she’s bad at hiding or not bothering to hide at all.  She flicks at the couch cushions nervously, as a low drum of thunder outside heralds the downpour going well into the evening.  “A new world?  A place you wanna live?”

“I don’t… well, not this time, no.  I mean…”

Lumencia gives you a baffled look.  “What?” she asks.  “Look, if you did find a place, you don’t gotta dance around it.  I told you, I’m cool with it.  You do what you gotta do!”   

_To hell with it._

She’d confided in you, your conscience chides, so the least you can do is return the favor.  Fair was fair, right?

“I’m not so sure that _is_ what I wanna do anymore,” you reply.  You glance at her with an easy smile, though it couldn’t feel emptier if you tried.  An attempt at courage, perhaps.  “Maybe… maybe your road doesn’t sound half bad.”

 _Maybe you want to become a hero._   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay! with work FINALLY settling down, maybe i'll have more time to write. :D this chapter wasn't very eventful, i know, but it was kinda important to establish a few things for plot-purposes. EITHER WAY, hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> thanks for reading, folks! <3 i appreciate it!


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